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Self file pg3 [pg1] [pg2] [Directory] Faces aren't faces 'til they move-what the face says about the self read moreIdentification with the enemy-becoming the bully who controls you read more The curse of trying to be normal read more The detachable self-out of body experiences read more How an audience calls forth the self read more Self as the signboard for a center of gravity read more Why do we have a self? read more The mutinous teens and the lonely twenties-development of a sense of self read more The fear of dissolution-commitment panic, etc. read more Yes, there is a child within read more The hormones of self-the self is a matter of chemistry read more Changing one's mind versus changing one's self read more Boosting your self image read more Do animals have selves? read more Practical applications of the theory of self read more The evolution of the self read more Instinct--the self as a puppet of our animal past read more The extrasomatory extensions of self-why we can't just love ourselves, or psychobabble's bad advice-extracranial extensions of self read more The superstar as the ultimate outboard self read more From fandom to fanaticism-selves and in search of themselves make mind-gangs--subcultures read more The group as an outboard extension of the self read more Maps and the anchors outside the brain-how the extrasomatory cables of self jerk and waggle the brain's mapmaker (the topographic theory of self meets the extrasomatory model) read more Couplehood and the anchoring of self read more Couplehood-unleashing the hidden selves read more Getting a grip--practical applications of the theory of self read more How to become an empath read more The secrets of loving (or hating) your self read more Mandatory and elective selves-the self as suit and tie read more Passion points-imprinting and the primal self read more The buried others beneath your will read more The mystery of identity read more =========================================================================================
Faces are not things photos can capture. They move, Marie, and in the process they reveal more than just skin tone and bone structure, they reveal the real secret of a face--your personality. -------------------------------------------- In a message dated 11/05/1999 7:28:51 PM Eastern Standard Time, fentress writes: << Subj: Re: [h-bd]
Re: Philosopher Rorty sneers--personal hb: it sounds like the
humor which sometimes accidentally oozes out of high-stress situations,
when things go so totally awry that one is takne to a different level
of distance and suddenly sees the whole thing as a cosmic joke. Interesting
phenomenon, and one which could prove a fruitful subject for analysis.
I suspect it's the self's way of divorcing it's self from a situation
which has bone wildly out of control. Since the self is a story-telling
deceiver which falsely claims control over a myriad of internal and
external events, there comes a time when its only way to assert control
is to pretend that it is separate from the us which the fates have gripped
and tossed about intolerably. It's like the various forms of identification
with the enemy, in which we, the victim, are so utterly trounced by
circumstance that our only way to trick our conscious storyteller into
a sense of power is to pretend that we are not the helplessly stomped
ragdolls we really are, but that we are among the folks with power who
are kicking the bejeezus out of us. Or that we are among the abstract
forces booting us about. Hence the identification with the bullying
gods and destinies. We ally our sense of self with the forces of a sadistic
universe. It's that identification with transcendent tormentors which
allows us to see the cosmic joke implicit in our plight.
_______________________________ _______________________________ two very genuine out?of?body experiences. One came when I was still in high school. Though no girl ever agreed to go to any of the Park School dances with me (and, in fact, my schoolmates were horrified at the idea that I might one day show up anyway), the dance committee actually had the audacity to ask me to compose and act out a skit at a school assembly to advertise their upcoming Howard?less event. So I wrote a satirical piece of doggerel, made up a piece of music to go with it, and improvised a dance. I'd done a lot of acting back then, and usually had the lead in things (Creon in Sophocles' Antigone, Androcles in George Bernard Shaw, and stuff like that), but this was going to be very different, since most of it would be made up as I went along. As I was out in front of the audience dancing my head off (a pretty ridiculous spectacle, in case you've never seen it), an incredibly strange thing happened. I began to feel the energy of the audience focusing on me. Then I felt it coalescing into a single force and pulsing THROUGH me. Then came the out of body experience. Some sort of force far greater than I was seemed to take me over. I was no longer inhabiting my own body. I was merely watching, as if from the vantage point of a fly on the ceiling. I literally saw my own body jerking around below me. I saw the audience. I was particularly astonished to notice one girl who absolutely loathed the very air I breathed become utterly spellbound, her face overcome with some very strange form of awe, almost like a beatitude. As you probably know, I may have been elected to all kinds of committee chairmanships in high school, but I was definitely not popular. In four years, I was never invited to a single party or informal social gathering. But when the dance was over, the strangest thing happened. The audience, a mob of over 350 people, rose to its feet like a single mass and rushed to the stage. These people who hated
me lifted me to their shoulders and literally carried me out of the
auditorium and up the stairs to the building housing the classrooms.
Nothing like it had ever happened at Park School before during my years
there??not even to the captains of winning football teams. And in my
remaining years, nothing like it would ever happen again. By the way,
once they finally got me lofted into the air, my "self" had
mercifully abandoned its perch on the ceiling and returned to my brain
pan where it belonged. The second out?of?body exerience happened when
I was 20, living in New Brunswick, New Jersey, doing research at Rutgers'
Graduate School of Education (yes, I know I'd never bothered to finish
my freshman year of college yet, but the professor who took me in was
kind enough to overlook technicalities) and writing foundation grant
proposals for the Middlesex County Mental Health Clinic. One morning
I got up and had a pain in my back. By the time I started brushing my
teeth, the pain had gotten sharper. Then it became more intense than
anything I'd ever experienced before in my life. Suddenly, I was down
on the floor, thrashing uncontrollably. My body, without asking my permission,
was whipping around in a horizontal position, as if someone with a giant
needle were trying to stab me from above, and all my reflexes were working
on their own to get me out of the way before the point could hit home.
Meanwhile, my conscious self pulled the old trick again. It abandoned
its earthly home. Once again, I took up my position on the ceiling and
simply watched what was going on with the thrashing body??MY body??
down below. The woman from whom I'd rented a room called a doctor, followed
his advice, dragged my contorting bundle of flesh into her car, and
rushed me to a hospital. I was going into shock. It was the attack of
a killer kidney stone. If she'd landed me in that hospital roughly a
half hour later, my chances of being alive today would have been close
to nil. So what was going on here? Some sort of compensatory reaction
in which the conscious mind moves over to let the unconscious take over
the driving wheel? A reaction which keeps the old consciousness busy
by generating the illusion that the familiar "I" of everyday
experience has been parked in some out of the way place, like the upper
corner of the room? I suspect so. << Subj: Re: the
"detachable self" hb: I've been mulling over what Denis said as well. There are many ways in which the self can become detached. In fact, very often it is an enormous struggle to attach it at all. That is, it is very difficult to get the self to see and genuinely feel the mass of our emotions. Though the self sees a world through our eyes, it tends to be quite blind to the feelings inside of us. It looks out the windows at the view but is imprisoned in its small apartment, often unable to go down the corridor a few inches and visit the neighbors next door. Out of body experiences, which is where we began, are something rare and strange. Denis seems to have far more experiene than most of us in dealing with those who detach in order to flee feelings which are all to ready to barge into the self's quarters. He seems to be working with those who've had traumatic experiences, and have been forced to set up barriers to block the memory. Sometimes this means fleeing into the strangeness of multiple selves. The mere existence of a coven of distinct selves in the same brain, each able to take over the body and impose its own mental, emotional, and physical settings, makes the question of what a self is all the more perplexing. It also demonstrates that a self has enormous power. Walter Freeman, in his Socieities of Brains (pp. 147-148) points out that each self is actually able to manifest a different disease. One personality will have asthma, while the others do not. Another self will have psoriasis, and a third shingles. When the self with asthma appears, the psoriasis and shingles disappear. What strange form of self-organized something is this which can manipulate aspects of the body using methods which it does not consciously know--in fact, methods which even the multi-generational mass mind of culture has not figured out? And how does it pull off such astonishing things when it can't even get a handle on such seemingly simple things as the moods which toss it about? Is it a mere a bit of exterior decor for these moods and body-settings--like the dorsal fin poking above the water, each fin different because the unseen shark beneath it is a very different being? But I digress. Denis is talking about a form of detachable self which dodges awareness of something all-too-ready to make itself obvious. Val and I are talking about out-of-body experiences in which awareness soars and we see things emerging from us which amaze us. Each is the opposite of the other. Each is a reality. And like most opposites, the two are joined at the hip--the hip of self. The trick here is to figure out what the coexistence of these contradictory truths tells us about the uses and evolutionary raison d'etres of the self. Val gives an extroardinary sense of the self which moves aside to let something else take over in his anecdotes. I suspect that underlying Denis' words is an equally vivid portrait of selves which are dodging something which they will not, under any conditions, allow near the controls. Or, to put it differently, one self steps aside to let something deeper and more certain emerge. Another frantically bobs and weaves in an attempt to block something whose emergence would be shattering. hb Vg: As to function, adaptation
& evolution I lean towards what Howard posted in response to your
letter. We appear to be dealing in the "detached self" with
a fundamental, extremely old, psychological adaptation, possibly an
ingrained mechanism that insures the smooth, uninterrupted application
of ancient pre-programmed motor patterns - when time is of the essence.
Zen in the art of sword play and archery is probably a deliberate way
to take advantage of this disassociation in order to gain a split second
advantage on the adversary. The disassociation allows for "regression"
to very basic probably innate motor patterns (instincts). However, what
gives me pause is what happened to my friend - there were two of us
involved in the bear episode I posted. My friend acted in an irrational,
and yet quite logical fashion - provided you knew something of his background.
At pains of boring you, let me tell the episode as it makes a number
of points. hb: which raises another question--why does cheating death exhilarate us so? I enjoy it immensely, and apparently so do quite a few others--bungee jumpers, paragliders, superstunting skateboarders, motorcycle racers, and a host of others. In these experiences we court the dissociation which removes our consciousness and brings that infinitely more assured motor operator to the fore. And, Lord, does it feel good. Among other things, it removes all the petty worries which normally plague us from one second to another, worries which can become as savage as piranhas. She - it was young female grizzly - rounded the tree, with great interest in it all, standing on her hind legs ever so often, but she made no attempt to climb (She could have! The tree was, unfortunately, such that small-bodied grizzlies can climb). At that point the question flashed through my mind "Where is Frank?" (here my disassociation ended). I look about, but could see nothing for a few long seconds. But then it hit me. I see Frank's head bobbing in the beaver pond. Frank cannot swim a stroke! Clearly, I had to hold the interest of the grizzly, and so I continued doing noisy antics. I think I descended somewhat to insure the bear would remain interested. She was, but then her interest faded and she turned and walked towards the next close by beaver bond and fiddled about on its shores. Well before that, however, I noticed that Frank, miraculously, had not drowned. In fact he had crossed one arm of the pond and his head was now bobbing in the next, deeper arm. When I looked towards him next, he had emerged from the pond and was running through the two foot high dwarf birches and willows - but not on two legs! he galloped on hands and feet, like a quadruped, albeit a rather clumsy one. hb: Here's another reaction which puzzles me. In my youth, I used peyote twice. Each time I felt I was receding back to an earlier primate state. And each time I discovered the advantages of walking on all fours. Doing this on a city sidewalk in Berkeley didn't in any way increase my mobility. But reverting to four-legged walking on and in the cracks under and between the rock formations jutting from the cliffs and beaches of Big Sug into the sea was another matter. Here, having one hand test the next bit of stone to see if it would hold my weight, then, if the probe indicated that it was safe to do so, following with my other three limbs, was a lifesaver. A single false mood would landed me in a sea whose fifteen-foot-high waves smashed mercilessly against the granite formations, and would have dismembered me on the razor juttings of the rocks. It felt as if the four-legged approach was a regression to a set of normally unused instincts. But was it? Or was it just something I'd picked up from an overdose of illustrations showing man evolving from the ape? Frank's use of the technique to escape the bear would tend to indicate something innate. vg: When I looked next
Frank had reached alone pine with a straight trunk that had no branches
for about 12-15 feet up. Frank tried to climb this tree with little
success. I shouted to him"Get your gun!" (Frank's truck was
parked about 300 yds off on the fire road). Eventually, Frank quit his
climbing attempts, and moving from tree to tree, glancing back at the
grizzly he ran to his truck, where he un-scabbard the rifle. By that
time I had come down, picked up our rods and fish and was approaching
the truck, from where Frank unleashed a fusillade towards the distant
grizzly. (His bullets landed short in the beaver pond, and did not spook,
let alone hurt the bear). hb: amazing. his self got out of the way, then blocked what had happened. Yours stood aside and watched in amazement, then recorded the experience. Is this an example of the opposition between Denis' form of detachment and its opposite? vg: When I pointed to
his wet clothing he accepted my explanation. When questioned why he
did not climb the spruce (the tree I climbed and for which he had priority),
He said that the tree was too small. In a message dated 11/14/1999 1:40:55 AM Eastern Standard Time, geistvr writes: << We appear to be dealing in the "detached self" with a fundamental, extremely old, psychological adaptation, possibly an ingrained mechanism that insures the smooth, uninterrupted application of ancient pre-programmed motor patterns - when time is of the essence. >> Here's one reason Val's
conscious self was wise to step aside when he was being chased by a
bear. Benjamin Libet's research shows that our unconcsious picks up
cues on what's going on a full half a second before the conscious mind
is able to wise up. Half a second in a life-and-death situation can
make the difference between giving after-dinner speeches about one's
adventures or attending an al fresco picnic as the main course. Howard Abstract A 'time-on'
theory to explain the cerebral distinction between conscious and unconscious
mental functions proposes that a substantial minimum duration ('time-on')
of appropriate neuronal activations up to about 0.5 s is required to
elicit conscious sensory experience, but that durations distinctly below
that minimum can mediate sensory detection without awareness. A direct
experimental test of this proposal is reported here. Stimuli (72 pulses/s)
above and below such minimum train durations (0-750 ms) were delivered
to the ventrobasal thalamus via electrodes chronically implanted for
the therapeutic control of intractable pain. Detection was measured
by the subject's forced choice as to stimulus delivery in one of two
intervals, regardless of any presence or absence of sensory awareness.
Subjects also indicated their awareness level of any stimulus-induced
sensation in each and every trial. The results show (1) that detection
(correct greater than 50%) occurred even with stimulus durations too
brief to elicit awareness, and (2) that to move from mere detection
to even an uncertain and often questionable sensory awareness required
a significantly larger additional duration of pulses. Thus simply increasing
duration ('time-on') of the same repetitive inputs to cerebral cortex
can convert an unconscious cognitive mental function (detection without
awareness) to a conscious one (detection with awareness). << GC hb: Glenn, I think you've hit on a critical word for this discussion--training. Basketball players, like Val's mountain goats and your horse, also make split-second tactical decisions, often decisions of enormous sophistication. But they are able to do it in large part because of years and years of practice. Practice builds a motor repertoire with which one can instantly improvise responses. The trick here is the difference between motor memes and verbal memes. Each resides in a diffeent portion of the brain. What's more, motor memes apparently have a far faster reaction time than verbal memes. This would imply that Val's response to the bear was based not just an instinct left over from the pleistocene or, more likely, the Cambrian and Jurassic. It also has learned components. Figuring out which are which would be quite some trick. It would also imply that under some conditions the verbal brain is muscled out of the picture so that the motor brain can take over without the obstacles thrown up by the verbal brain's quibbling and indecision. As for the separate cerebral
systems which handle motor and verbal memories, here's a squib from
Global Brain: Human and animal bodies pick up information from pressure gauges in the bottoms of the feet, from nerves which wrap the base of fur and body hairs, from sensors registering the vibrations of bristles in the ear, from the tips of neural fibers groping molecules in the nasal cavity's air, and from light detectors in the eye. All is funneled through the brain's emotional center--the limbic system--a leftover from reptilian and early mammalian days. There, instinct and personal memory set off elation, devastation, fear, anger, and frustration as internal signal flares. Should a batch of input spark emotional ignition, the limbic system routes the hot arrival to the storage lockers of cognition--the cooling vaults of memory. But not all storage lockers are the same. As I just implied, there are two radically different sorts of memory storerooms in the human brain. The first are antique caches inherited from the animals who came before mankind. They handle visceral memories, things we can't express and yet remain after they're through--the potent feeling of a joy or agony, or our learning to perform a feat of derring-do--doing a triple twirl during a leap, riding a bicycle, hammering a recalcitrant nut into giving up its fruit. These muscle-and-emotion memories are slid to the amygdala and slung under the canopy of the cortex where they are snagged in a curve of axons called the striatum. Extra information is packed away in the motor and sensory corridors, the cerebellum, and a widespread nervous system so out of our control that its very name--"autonomic"--comes from its autonomy, its stubborn independence from our sense of a conscious "me." A wide variety of animals practice wordless habit-stashing. It's the core of imitative learning and of body-memory. The result is the behavioral meme, a skill or a strong inkling well beyond the realm of human thought. Yes, we know how to ride a bike. But the finest rally racer can't explain the symphony of neural cues he uses to sustain a simple thing like balance. If we focus consciously on the angle to which we must adjust each of our vertebrae while slaloming through traffic at top speed, we are likely to lose the hang and scrape our head on hard concrete. Broca's area, the brain
enhancement possessed two million years ago by the Homo habilis known
as KNM-ER 1470, helped create entirely new forms of data cabinets, those
which house verbal memories. Verbal memes, the kind we can convey by
speech, the kind that our storytelling consciousness can spin into debates,
myths, tall-tales, complaints, or the instructions with which we teach,
take a very different route to memory. They slide back to the curved
prongs of the hippocampus, which flip them forward to the cortexes of
the temporal lobes, accessible to manipulators like Broca's area and
to two other verbal twiddlers which emerged in early Homo habilis--the
supramarginal and angular gyri. These are some of the processors which
piece together data for our inner voices and our blathering tongues.
They are the brain devices from which verbal memes are wrung. . Richard Dawkins. The
Selfish Gene. New York: 206. -------------------------------------------- In a message dated 11/15/1999 2:31:36 PM Eastern Standard Time, pithycus writes: << As I have always
understood the phenomenon, the out-of-body experience that Glenn--This may provide the key to another puzzle of the out of body experience. During my two rather unexpected incidents, I was on the ceiling looking down at my own body. To those who believe that the soul actually leaves the body, this is proof positive. To an atheist fascinated by the emotional reality, importance, and misleading nature of "spiritual" experiences, the consciousness or soul or whatever you want to call it by no means departs the cranium and flitters up to the acoustic tile. So how is the illusion of this vision--the clear sight of ourselves down below and our sense that we are above--produced? Probably by whatever mechanism gives us the same sort of clear visions accompanied by other convincing sensations in vivid dreams. By the way, this would indicate that you may be on to something when you suggest that out of body experiences may have played an important role in the early shaping of men's worldviews. When they are generalizing, anthropologists often say that the separation from our body and our seemingly free ability to fly over landscapes in dreams helped convince us that we had souls to begin with. The dream illusions of roaming gave us the impression that the soul could cepart the body and go off a wandering. Howard In a message dated 11/15/1999 10:48:40 AM Eastern Standard Time, he@ writes: hb: amazing, Hannes. However this thread has been creating the impression that we experience many forms of detachable self. Inescapable trauma may cause one form, danger escaped another, and high excitement yet a third. The auction would fall into category number three--excitement. Which leads to further guesswork based on Denis Donovan's evocation of the consequences of trauma. Inescapable trauma probably triggers the multiple personality style of self dissociation, a mechanism for evading awareness of a horrid memory or continuing fact. Danger escaped--as in the case of Val and the bear--leads to exhiliration and a good story. Excitement leads to--well--a stranger story. Now how does my out of body experience when the kidney stone pain was stabbing me fit into all of this? It was inescapable pain. But it didn't carry the social stigma associated with things like childhood sexual abuse. This would add yet another variable to the determination of which form of self detachment one might experience. The four would include: controllability, uncontrollability, social acceptability, danger, and excitement. Strangely, these factors are almost identical with the ones which lead societies and their members to undergo phenotypic changes. Val Geist proposed that animal groups swing from maintenance mode to dispersal mode and back--a pattern which recurs at every level of life from the bacterial to the mammalian Looking at human societies, I proposed something considerably more confusing, a quintet of phenotypic modes--fleeing, fasting, feeding, questing, and conquering. Unconrollable threat led to fleeing, the state in which a society's members abandon their social cohesion and become refugees. Uncontrollable threat accompanied by social unacceptability leads to something similar in individual psychology. The self shatters into several personalities, each trying to flee a core danger The relationship between individual psychology and mass psychology may not be as tenuous as af first it seems. Self is a social interface. The larger self of a society is a pointilist product of the individual selves it shapes and which shape it. When fleeing their core social group, individuals are undergoing a split of individual from social self. But individual and social self are so completely interwoven that the process has got to be traumatic. Or, to put it differently, a split in personality among numerous individuals simulltaneouslly can accompany a shattering of a society and the resulting flight of refugees, displaced from all they formerly identified with them-selves. On the other hand, controllable threat leads to fasting--the conservation of resources to weather the storm as a coherent social group. No splitting of self is necessary here. And so on up the ladder. Feeding occurs when a society has hit a jackpot of resources and its members to settle down and mine them for all they're worth. What effect this would have on the sense of self I'm not sure. Questing occurs when a socond generation is born into the rich feeding grounds. The new cohort of youngsters attempts to establish its own identity by challenging its parents' generation, questioning its values, rejecting its ways of doing things, etc. This is definitely a process which involves the self. Having plenty of resources but a need to set one's self off from one's parents is entirely a matter of self definition. And, as in 1968, it can redefine a culture. Conquering occurs when a society is besotted with power and attempts to augment its sense of control (and validate its personal and shared sense of self-grandeur) by swallowing other societies. The sense of self is involved here as well, though it will take a bit of thought to work out the implications more fully. To paraphrase David Berreby, the personal sense of self is a stitch in the social tapestry which stretches across continents, seas, and time, weaving thousnds of generations past together with those alive today and those not yet born. When the tapestry is tugged, all the threads move. When a single thread is snipped, its loss of strength threatens all the stictches to which it is attached. Self is the weave of society within us. Inner self is the weaver of society's exterior. Howard Ferdo--these are all good points. Self needs to be understood from as many perpectives as we, with our mere end-of-the-20th-century science, can muster. The harder we work at the problem, the easier it will be for following generations to get a handle on the process of self, a center-maker which is part of many groups, a rider of many squabbling neural structures, a creator of illusory unity in the chaos of diversity and change, a maker of internal dialog with the host of humans whose voices we carry within us, a creator of narrative with which we attempt to gain attention from those around us and ascend the social scale, a stitch in the weave of culture, and sometimes a weaver of new cultural embroidery. Howard P.S. On the subject of center-makers, we seem to carry a great many within us. As David Berreby's ponderings remind us, we are able to create ceategories which unite a bewildering variety of entities or actions into an archetypal commonality. Is the self merely one of our category makers and archetype creators? Is it just one more of the mechanisms with which the mind averages the scraps in a whirlwind of chaos, finds their common characteristics, and from the resulting heap of overlaps derives a fanciful quintessence?
hb: It's Howard butting in here. And the answer is yes. I've described my out of body experiences, which were alive with awareness, taught me new things about life, and stamped themselves luminously into my memory. I also dissociate when I'm hit with something emotional distressing. That is, my mind or emotional machinery tucks sn rmotionally painful stimulus out of sight within minutes of its occurrence. I feel the pain but can't figure out why. Recovering the msssing trigger is often impossible. And when I was young, I displaced the resulting emotions terribly. So this form of dissociation is the very opposite of the bright and vivid awareness highlighted by an out of body experience. Instead of heightened awarness, awareness is erased. My former wife of 32 years dissociated in remarkable ways, probably because of the trauma of being "knocked up" at the age of 19 (by her previous husband--who she was forced to marry due to the pregnancy), the humiliation of being a subject of what she felt was universal opprobrium in her hometown of 50,000 people in upstate NY, angering and upsetting her parents, being forced to drop out of Skidmore College and take waitressing jobs to support her baby and her new husband, all because of a bit of sexual experimention which didn't even involve penetration. The result was that few of her feelings ever reached the level of awareness. In fact, on those rare occasions when they came near the surface, she was terrified and did everything in her power to keep them from entering her conscious sense of self. The result was that on occasion she could be two people. One was the genuinely good and charitable person of whom she was aware, the person who controlled her words and self image. The other was an individual of enormous greed, shrewd tactics, and calculating cruelty, a personality only manifested in her actions, actions for which she unconsciously erected elaborate schemes which would guarantee her an excuse for carrying out her fairly ghastly intentions in a manner which, to her, seemed righteously justified and necessary. These observations are
consistent with those reported by Al Cheyne below. Both I and my wife
repress traumas to which we react in ways we imagine to be socially
unacceptable. However my two out of body experiences both took place
when my body was controlled by non-conscious forces within me, but forces
which I welcomed and which were in no way socially objectionable. Our
audience of internal significant others seems to make the difference
between erasure and enhancement of awareness. If it gives a thumbs up,
we allow the experience into our awareness. If it is so pleasing to
our internal audience that it will make a juicy story afterword, we
are doubly aware of it. However if it will cause the audience in our
heads to spurn and loathe us, our response is tucked under the carpet
of consciousness and hidden from our sight. hb: Al, your data is extremly interesting. My ignorance of terminology which comes easily to you must wear you out. But the Merram Webster Medical Dictionary does not give a definition for the term "hypnopompic." Could you explain what it means? experiences (HHEs) generally.
On the other hand, This is an extremely interesting approach. But how does it prove out in reality? The seriously traumatized, I suspect, detach themselves when something like their old trauma repeats. I'd imagine that their body freezes while their mind goes off into its own hiding hole, which means that they've not practiced for survival, but have reenacted and perfected an apoptotic mechanism--a self-destruct device. The adaptive value of such devices is to render those who have no power to deal with a situation socially ineffective, thus eliminating individuals who might lead the larger group astray. In other words, self-destruct mechanisms do not save the individual, but they do benefit the collective intelligence of the group. As Irwin Silverman very cleverly pointed out in one of his papers, "Inclusive Fitness and Ethnocentrism"--"though it may not sufficiently serve one's fitness to sacrifice for another who is perceived as sharing a coefficient of relationship of 1/1000, the gains from helping 500 such individuals may begin to approximate those achieved by nepotism." (Irwin Silverman. "Inclusive Fitness and Ethnocentrism." In The Sociobiology of Ethnocentrism: Evolutionary Dimensions of Xenophobia, Discrimination, Racism and Nationalism, edited by Vernon Reynolds, Vincent Falger, and Ian Vine. London: Croom Helm, 1987: 112.) Howard In a message dated 12/26/99 12:04:54 PM Pacific Standard Time, intarts writes: << Agree that play
need not be fun. An example par excellence that is P.S. If indeed individuals with post-traumatic dissociation disconnect when a crisis of the kind seared into their brains by past experience arrives, it would indicate that the amygdala is disengaging of the action-enabling clutch of the dopaminergic striatal system. Any brain experts in the audience with clues as to the validity of this supposition? Howard
However being forced to
display in front of those to whom one is subordinate and who resist
one's attempt to get to their level is another matter. This is what
one must do in parading before a peer-review panel, unless one has already
fought one's way into their club or, through nobel prizes and other
crowbars of fame, put the the peer-reviewers into a submissive position.
The hormonal setup into which subordinates are strapped leads to intimidation
and caution. Here we've got stress hormones inhibiting mental activity. hb: studies indicating the influence of an authority figure's pre-judgement on behavior would support you here. In one experiment, for example, aging subjects shown stereotypes of wise elders improved in memory, but those given visions of senility became more forgetful. In another, some African American subjects had to fill out a form indicating their race and others didn't. Those who'd been forced to pigeon-hole themselves as black did worse on tests than those who had not been reminded about their skin color. (Both studies are described in Wendi A. Walsh and Mahazarin R. Banati, "The Collective Self," In The Self Across Psychology: Self-Recognition, Self-Awareness, and the Self Concept, edited by Joan Gay Snodgrass and Robert L. Thompson. New York: New York Academy of Sciences: 1997: 206-207.). _______________________________
<<<<I am sympathetic
to the notion that my self may well be a spandrel. I am I'm puzzled by this. Everyone
seems to agree that primates are social David--this is a brilliant reason for a self--a representation of an invisible centering point, sort of like a signboard for the center of gravity of the zillion fragments which make up a galaxy. The center of gravity of a galaxy is extremely real, but may be dangling unseen and unseeable in empty space. Though it may seem an abstraction conjured up by physicists, it is, in fact, the pivot around which the entire ten million light years or more of galactic matter revolves. Is there a similar abstract pivot of the organism? And if a self is useful in representing it, how many organisms have selves? You've mentioned that having some sort of symbol for the coherence at the heart of the multi-trillion-celled, constantly changing cellular agglomeration we call a human is a necessity in dealing with other humans. It's a handle on the unhandlable which social creatures in particular need in order to keep track of where they are, where they're going, and with whose aid they are most likely to get there. However nearly every species on the planet is social--from bacteria to seemingly solitary cats. So which of us have conscious selves and which of us don't? Which of us have group selves and which don't? (Humans definitely have group selves--I am a New Yorker, a scientist, an American, a Jew, an atheist, etc., etc.) Is there some sort of self even in creatures which do not enjoy the luxury of consciousness? And if so, what sort might that be? Howard
What adaptive role, if
any, has kept evolution from pruning this >expensive parlor trick
from our repertoire. Even if it has no role, how the >heck did it
get there? Remember, when I say expensive, I mean expensive. The >brain
occupies 5% of our body mass but uses 20% of our energy. hb
<< >What I cannot
understand, as I say in the poem I posted yesterday, is why am hb: hmmm. I think you've
hit on something which could be tested experimentally. Val Geist managed
to scramble up a tree and outwit a grizzly while his self was parked
on a distant branch and left to merely watch. Our bodies drive us to
work while our minds--and hence our selves--wander off into the realms
of reverie, often seeming to leave the car altogether. But if we were
to remove the sense of self, what activities would we ELIMINATE? Which
of the daily deeds we take for granted would become impossible to us?
Presenting ourselves to others verbally might be one of them. Yes, I
suspect we could utter the usual mmm-hmmms during a conversation with
a mate which follows a well-known path and to which we don't have to
devote much attention. But what about giving a presentation to an in-house
committee, shepherding it through the internal approval process, then
altering the presentation to fit the psychological nooks and crannies
of an outside evaluating committee? Or meeting a new person of the opposite
sex and working like blazes to sense her character (or his) so we can
make a good impression? Would we be able to handle such things with
no careful shepherding of our squabble-prone brain-parts, no conscious
calculation mixed in with intuitive feel? Or, to use the words of Goffman's
title, would we be able to manage "the presentation of self in
everyday life?" Howard
Russell Kick and hb 2/22/01-rk: I considered myself a loner up until my mid- 20s, but since then I feel empty if I'm not in a committed, (hopefully) long-term love relationship. hb: me too. I'm sure your theory of self will shed light on this. hb: it's the extrasomatory extensions of the self theory. the thing about the twenties has to do with what "who am I?" and "finding your self" are all about. Rk: It seems to be a common part of getting older. As John Lennon sang, "When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody's help in any way, but now those days are gone..."
It felt to me like a toxic
mental sludge had flowed like magma around the hb: wonderfully written. however I suspect that some of the toxic sludge was in you. in other words, i'm a very powerful and controlling personality. i tend to be like too much of a good thing, i overwhelm some people. maintaining the membrane-envelope of self is a difficult thing. when someone comes along who threatens to dissolve it, we panic and have to run like hell. this is what happens in romantic relationships which reach the stage where intimacy turns to terror and we withdraw. there's not phrase for this when women are the ones who pull away. but there is a name for it when men do the same damned thing--"commitment phobia." This need to defend our ultra-fragile sense of self also shows up when we return to our parents' homes and melt back into infantile torpidity. most folks have to get out of the hellhole of their parents' home in a couple of days in order to save themselves from utter disappearance as an adult. The place strips them of their sense of power and of individual identity. Susan Sively 6/15/00--As for my self-membrane, nothing gets through. I am a dedicated commitment-phobic. I dare to call it freedom. hb: it's a trade off.
you give up intimacy and gain a thick armor which frees you to a certain
extent from the awareness of pain. but usually the pain one tries to
hold back when one builds an interior container of steel is less than
one imagines it to be. like a demon tempted into the light, by day it
loses its ferocity. John??This is very meaty indeed. How did you receive my posting? Would you like to be added to our list? Below some comments. In a message dated 98?03?24
20:01:52 EST, intarts writes: Good observations. Further observations from psychiatry: many disorders that follow psychological trauma (PTSD, borderline personality d/o, dissociative disorders etc.) manifest both with (1) self?other boundary confusions, e.g. trying to get another to do what only oneself can do, and if the others accept the invite, then rebelling against the perceived intrusion by that other against one's one autonomy; FIRST OFF, THIS IS AN EXTREMELY COMMON MECHANISM IN ROMANTIC PANIC. I'M OBSERVING A CASE NOW IN WHICH A MALE WHO WOULD RATE PERFECTLY NORMAL ON ANY STANDARD PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALE (THOUGH HIS INTELLIGENCE LEVEL, I SUSPECT, WOULD BE HIGHER THAN MOST) FORCES ANY WOMAN WITH WHOM HE BECOMES ROMANTICALLY INVOLVED TO BECOME THE DECISION MAKER AND RULE OVER HIM LIKE A MOTHER. THEN HE RESENTS HER DOMINANCE OVER HIM AND ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. IN HIS MID?FORTIES, HE HASN'T BEEN ABLE TO SUSTAIN A RELATIONSHIP FOR MORE THAN THREE OR FOUR YEARS AND WONDERS WHY ALL HIS WIVES AND GIRLFRIENDS HAVE TURNED INTO "ANGRY WITCHES." HE, OF COURSE, HAS FORCED THEM INTO THE ROLE. I SUSPECT HIS EVENTUAL WITHDRAWAL AND RESENTMENT UPSET HIS MATES AND SLOWLY MADE THEM ANGRY. TURNING TO SUCH PROBLEMS AS POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDERS, TWO MINOR OBSERVATIONS: THE AMYGDALA PLAYS A STRONG ROLE IN THIS DAMAGE; AND THE DAMAGE INVOLVED AFTER A SEVERE FAILURE OF CONTROL (ONE WAY OF CHARACTERIZING TRAUMA) IS A MANIFESTATION OF THE "UTILITY SORTER" MENTIONED AS A PART OF THE COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM MODEL OF COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE IN AN EARLIER POSTING. and (2) very intense intimacy?distance conflicts. The pain of traumatic affect seems to lead one to seek support over and beyond uncomplicated seeking of love and romance, but at the same time, to develop a demand for autonomy that's virtually inviolable as an antithesis to traumatic helplessness. LOSS OF CONTROL INVARIABLY PRODUCES AVOIDANCE SIGNALS. THESE ARE TRIGGERED IN HUMANS BY EMOTIONAL (HENCE neuroendocrinological) STATE. AVOIDANCE CUES??MANIFESTED IN HUMANS IN SPEECH, BODY LANGUAGE, AND MANY OTHER FORMS OF VERBAL AND NON?VERBAL COMMUNICATION??SERVE THE SAME ROLE AS CHEMOTACTIC AVOIDANCE SIGNALS IN THE "CREATIVE WEB" OR COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM OF A BACTERIAL COLONY. THEY TURN AN INDIVIDUAL INTO A MODULE OF A LARGER CALCULATING MECHANISM. Traumatized couples do better when they maintain a greater?than?normal optimum distance, so that the attractive pulls outweigh the distancing pushes. MY LORD, BUT YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR FINGER EXTREMELY WELL ON A BUNCH OF THE MANIFESTATIONS I'VE OBSERVED. THOSE WHO NEED DISTANCE AND FEAR BEING "SWALLOWED" OR "SMOTHERED" FEEL THEY ARE LOOKING FOR HIGH INTIMACY, BUT GENERALLY SOLVE THE PARADOX OF THE ROMANTIC ATTRACTION/REPULSION PROBLEM BY PICKING AN EMOTIONALLY DISTANT MATE, ONE WHO IS VIRTUALLY UNATTAINABLE, EVEN WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF MARRIAGE. I WONDER IF THE PEOPLE IN WHOM I'VE BEEN OBSERVING THIS HAVE HAD SOME TRAUMATIC LOSS OF CONTROL IN THEIR PAST AND BEEN SCARRED BY THE ENDOGENOUS PENALTIES EXACTED BY THE UTILITY SORTER. I'VE SUSPECTED IN WORKING WITH THESE PEOPLE THAT THEY CARRY SOME INFANTILE OR OTHER EARLY EXPERIENCE OF LOSS OF CONTROL THAT MAKES THEIR FEAR OF HAVING THEIR ENVELOPE OF SELF DISSOLVED BY CLOSENESS TO ANOTHER FAR GREATER THAN IN NORMAL INDIVIDUALS. I've hypothesized in a 1990 article on "the evolution of posttraumatic behavior...", that one of several evolved effects of the trauma response is to strengthen in?group enmeshment in defense vs. outgroups: HMM, SO WE ARE BOTH ON A SIMILAR TRACK, USING A GROUP SELECTIONIST APPROACH TO SOLVE THE QUESTION OF HOW AND WHY THESE MALADAPTIVE INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIORS EVOLVED. THEY EVOLVED, WE BOTH HYPOTHESIZE, TO INCREASE THE SUCCESS OF THE GROUP IN ITS COMPETITION WITH OTHER GROUPS. COULD YOU SEND A COPY OF YOUR PAPER? this is adaptive in stable but dangerous milieus, but dysfunctional if not frankly maladaptive in rapidly changing ones. In the latter, because of rapidly shifting alliances, greater selective pressure is given to the need for autonomy, making enmeshment now more of a threat, and increasing the likelihood of people acting out against it. I'VE COLLECTED A VAST BODY OF MATERIAL ON HOW STRESSFUL ENVIRONMENTAL PRESSURES, RANGING FROM HEAT TO NOISE AND CROWDING??THE KINDS OF THINGS WHICH WOULD INDICATE THAT A GROUP HAS EITHER CHOSEN A POOR ENVIRONMENT, OVERCROWDED AND OVERUSED A FORMERLY FRUITFUL ENVIRONMENT, ETC.-- PRODUCES THESE REPULSION SIGNALS. I'M ALSO WORKING ON A MODEL OF GROUP PHENOTYPES WHICH ADJUST TO DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS. THE FIVE POINTS ON THE CONTINUUM INCLUDE FLEEING (WHEN THE ENVIRONMENT IS EKED OUT AND THE GROUP MEMBERS SENSE NO POSSIBILITY OF CONTROL OVER THE CRISIS), FASTING (WHEN THE GROUP ENVIRONMENT IS IMPOVERISHED, YET THE GROUP RETAINS ITS COHESION AND GOES INTO A RESOURCE?CONSERVING MODE??THE MODE GENERALLY ASSOCIATED WITH THE k?STATE OR WITH WHAT VALERIUS GEIST CALLS THE MAINTENANCE PHASE); FEEDING (WHEN A GROUP HAS FOUND A PRODUCTIVE ENVIRONMENT AND SETTLES IN STUBBORNLY TO EXPLOIT THE BOUNTY TO THE MAX); QUESTING (WHEN A GROUP HAS BEEN SETTLED IN A HIGH?CONTROL, HIGH?INTERGROUP?STATUS, HIGH SURPLUS ENVIRONMENT FOR SOME TIME AND NEW GENERATIONS PRODUCE AN ABNORMAL NUMBER OF QUESTIONERS OF THE SYSTEM, OUTRIGHT REBELS, AND EXPLORERS OF NEW OPPORTUNITIES??THIS CORRESPONDS WITH THE R?STATE AND WITH DR. GEIST'S DISPERSAL MODE); AND CONQUERING (WHEN GOBBLING UP ADDITIONAL TERRITORY AND FRESH OPPORTUNITIES GOES FROM BEING THE BUSINESS OF REBELS TO THE BUSINESS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT). YOU CAN SEE THESE PHASES AT WORK IN BEE COLONIES, HUMAN GROUPS, AND MANY OTHERS. I'M CURRENTLY STUDYING HOW THEY WORKED OUT IN THE RISE AND FALL OF ATHENS FROM ROUGHLY 2,000 BC TO ROUGHLY 146 BC. Many thanks for your observations. They've helped me greatly in clarifying some of the points of the model on which I'm working. Cheers, Howa
gm: l will call my kid and tell her about getting in touch with Di. She is not doing well at all at my moms. lt annoys me because as much as my mom says she loves to have her there and that she lets her do whatever she wants and doesnt understand why the kid wants to move on her own, she is constantly complaining to me about her and Adria is going nuts. Why is it Howard, that my mom promises so much, opens her house and heart to us and then takes it back ? l dont get it. Do you think she is suffering from schysophrenia ? ( l know l didnt spell that right at all ). She says she loves to have my kids there and is always inviting people to eat over.But..........when its all over she says people have no heart and they dont understansd how she feels and that she is old....she is definitely psychotic ? Why is it Howard, that my mom promises so much, opens her house and heart to us and then takes it back ? l dont get it. Do you think she is suffering from schysophrenia ? hb: because we all carry all the stages of our life inside of us. your mother is reverting to the status of a baby. she is crying out for attention and love. the answer: retirement community where she can make friends and be surrounded by them. Howard
This outward turn of the self may be why we have an easy time figuring out the problems of others, but an insanely difficult time making our own choices and sorting out our own delights or woes. Our self, says the theory, evolved to send us into the arms of others, to turn us into data-sharers and antennae for the social group. Social groups that pooled brains this way, says the theory, would have outcomputed and outcompeted others. So those individuals would have survived whose selves best plugged them into the group mesh of minds, the parallel-distributed processing network of the gang. Selves that did the most to increase the collective IQ would have had the edge because their groups would have triumphed. The challenge has been to come up with research that would back this evolutionary hypothesis. Chances are that the study reported on below provides one microbit of supporting data. Studies on mice have shown that if you knock out the oxytocin gene, the de-oxytocinated rodents lose their ability to remember who's who. They lose a key networking ability. More important, to quote the Emory University press release about the study, it "demonstrates that social memory has a neural basis distinct from other forms of memory." Social memory has a separate neural swatch? This is a strong clue that the mind we've evolved to mesh with others may have evolved separately from the braintwists that handle food, follow familiar pathways, avoid the pounce of a cat, and handle the memories that fuel other basic survival tricks. One key to sociality is the self--the billboard with which we advertise to and influence others. Ergo, self may well have evolved in its own peculiar way, as a plug for engaging others, but not as a switchpoint giving us direct access to our own interior events. In other words, self may well have evolved to prod us into scurrying to others when we run into something exciting or confusing, not to help us dig a few inches back into the synaptic and biochemical tangle that makes emotions pop and figure them out on our own. Which, in turn, would mean that self, of all the absurdities, is an outsider in the skull-it may be among the first to feel the pain but it's often the last to be told why. The self may well be an exile living in the cranium, one that needs other selves-other exiles-to survive. Does anyone else know of work that would support or negate these ideas? Howard p.s. Oxytocin is the big-time
social glue-it's the hormone most involved in bonding us to each other.
Other aspects of the theory of self I've been working on boil down to
one thing-self is others. Oxytocin is what ropes us to others. So the
connections all make sense. Or the sense all makes connections. Social
connections, that is. ________
To be sure the problem
didn't lie with generally impaired olfactory functioning, Winslow's
team tested the animals' all-important sense of smell with various food-foraging
tasks. The normal and transgenic mice both were able to find buried
food as quickly as food placed clearly in view -- suggesting they could
find the hidden food through their sense of smell. Both rapidly became
"familiar" with scented foods, such as lemon and chocolate,
and recognized when a scent was changed, showing that olfactory function
was not measurably influenced by the lack of oxytocin. In addition,
the scientists tested the spatial memory of the mice using a water maze
task, to see if other forms of memory were also impaired due to the
lack of oxytocin. Transgenic mice were every bit as adept at finding
their way around the maze as were normal mice, demonstrating that spatial
memory was intact. Dr. Winslow was successful in restoring social memory
formation by treating the knockout mice with oxytocin. In these mice,
social amnesia disappeared. Like the normal mice, they again showed
the characteristic decline in time spent investigating familiar females,
and recovered interest when a new female entered the cage. Virtually
all forms of psychopathology, which include some of man's most debilitating
clinical disorders, are characterized by abnormal social attachments.
Yet very little is known about the normal process of bond formation.
This work helps lay the groundwork for defining the neural basis of
attachment and identifying potential pharmacological targets in the
brain for future therapies. ### This study was funded by grants from
Emory University, the National Institutes of Health and the National
Alliance for Autism Research. Yerkes Primate Research Center is the
oldest scientific institution dedicated to primate research. Its programs
cover a wide range of biomedical and behavioral sciences. [ Print This
Article | Close This Window ] hb: a very good idea, but a very complex subject. It has a lot to do with the human-imprinting-produces-the-seat-of-the-soul research I'm doing. In other words, you fall in love with a person similar to the one your emotional brain locked onto when you were a child or teenager. For teenage imprinting, see Fons' relationship in Israel when he was 15 and the impact it's had on his life. I ran into an unexpected treasure trove on human imprinting this morning--a story in the New Yorker (see C:\teXT\soul.doc) about folks who have a burning need to get a limb or two amputated. This is a serious syndrome. It hits people who imprinted on an amputee when they were between the age of three and nine. The sexual aspect--being sexually aroused by amputees--surfaces when the hormones kick in and kids have had a few years to sort out what does and doesnt attract them. This means the age of 15 in 75% of the cases surveyed. mr: instead (with Bill Jankowiak in Las Vegas). The PEA hb: is this Pea-SK--the sulfakinin in insects? Or the HPA--the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis? Wait, I found it--phenylethylamine. Whoops--it's two hours later, and you've piqued my curiosity into researching PEA. Interesting hormone/neurotransmitter. By the way, in the process of hunting for the PEA data, I ran into an intersting tidbit. Octopamine is the hormone that charges up winning lobsters after a show down with a rival who slinks away (yes, lobsters do stand tall when they win and slump as if they're trying to bury themselves in the sea bottom when they lose). Octopamine is also present in all mammals. Though its role in mammals seems as yet unclear, the fact that this hormone of hierarchy courses through the circulatory system of both crustaceans and humans hints that hierarchical battles and their chemical after-effects may well have come to us from a common ancestor. This would throw the date for the origins of hierarchical competition back to roughly 550 million years ago. No wonder humans who try to set up egalitarian societies have a very hard time. They're bucking something deep in our biology. This may explain why the kibbutz movement in Israel has failed. It produced wonderful, egalitarian societies that sparkled with small and large pleasures. I know, I lived on one for a year. But the kibbutzim haven't been able to hold on to their young people and are disappearing with an unfortunate whimper. Meanwhile the large scale attempts at egalitarianism--Marxism in China, Russia, and Cuba--have gone radically hierarchical right from the beginning. Fidel, Mao, and Lenin used the language of equality to perpetrate the opposite--dictatorship accompanied by the creation of a new aristocracy--the high-ranking members of the party, the nomenklatura. The hormones that bind us together indicate how much our biology has evolved to quilt us into a larger social fabric--the fabric of family in the case of romance and the fabric of the tribe, the nation, the empire, or the ummah, in the case of dominance hierarchies. mr: , norepinephrine and dopamine at 1st stage and oxytocine and vasopressine at 2nd. hb: great summary. mr: Interesting stuff about prolactin in your recent postings. I don't know anything about cholycystokinin, which was also mentioned - have to check that out. hb: I can send you the Bloomian hypothesis about its evolutionary role, if you want. mr: But is falling in love different for a highly social animal like man than for prairie voles and Siberian hamsters? hb: good question. I think
we have to have belief systems that match--something the monogamous
voles of the prairie don't have to worry about. We're also much more
mobile than voles, and tend to imprint not just on people, but on places.
If two folks who've been married for a while develop an intractable
urge to go back to a place that reminds them of home or offers them
a better future, and the places they want to live don't match up, the
result is often divorce. Humans also have to have goals that match.
It's not enough for mating humans to share lifestyle and career goals
when they're young. As they grow older new goals emerge. Those have
to match, too, or the relationship is likely to go down the tubes. hb: this is a remarkable quote. As another person whose spent 20 years studying charismatic movements by helping to engender them, I need to ponder this. I'm not sure it's true. mr: What role would the temporal lobe play in this I wonder (which is probably involved in religious revelations). hb: a big one, I suspect. Sexuality, says my wife, Diane Starr Petryk-Bloom, is all in the brain. It's another two hours later, and here's what I've come up with on the topic: Note these two articles on music. Music is another social glue. It's not only involved in romance, but it helps subcultures find an indentity and cohere, it helps military units sychronize both emotionally and pysically, it brings tribes, nations, or congregations together, and it's at the heart of many a social ritual. Musical ecstasies involve the orbitofrontal region of the brain-part of the prefrontal cortex. The orbitofrontal cortex is responsible for some very important functions, functions that overlap in a telling manner. It's a key to social perception-to our sense of the social landscape. It's also a major decision maker. However it makes its decisions in direct consultation with the amygdala…a potent part of the emotional brain-the limbic system. Curiously, the amygdala is the alarm system of the brain-the part that stores memories of fear and rouses new terrors. Which would indicate that before we make a decision, we evaluate the social landscape, the social consequences, the ways in which what we do may be harshly judged by others, the ways in which our next act may make us look gauche, idiotic, or downright disgusting. It's curious that the orbitofrontal region is also involved in musical ecstasies. I've hypothesized for quite a long time now that ecstatic or transcendent experiences are those that take us into the seemingly infinite ocean of the the group's identity. They dissolve our individual envelope of self for a minute or two. They banish the amygdala's wariness of making fools of ourselves. Transcendent feelings carry us into the soul of the group-its emergent identity, the group self that hovers over a cluster of humans like a flame does over charcoal. Transcendent experiences make us feel a vital part of something larger than our selves. Which might mean thar for an instant, transcendent experiences like falling in love, having chills go down your spine when you listen to music, or participating in a torch-light parade that carries you into the ecstatic realm of the volkgeist cut the ties with which the amygdala normally holds the orbitofrontal social decision maker in a thrall of insecurity. They let the orbitofrontal cortex experience the group without the fear of blowing it, of doing something foolish. This is sheer guesswork. But if it's true, it also tells us a tale about the self. The self is that conjunction of oritofrontal cortex and amygdala that weighs how each action will be judged by those around us… how each nod of our head or word from our mouth could subject us to ridicule and rejection. The self is a product of social fear. By the way, the amygdala and the orbitofrontal region work hand in hand-or synapse in synapse-with a vigilant sentinel that stands guard over the social signals given off by the face, hands, and body and also keeps the senses peeled for the social signals given off by others. This watchman is the superior temporal sulcus. Here are some references: Intensely pleasurable
responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated
in reward and emotion. Blood AJ, Zatorre RJ. Montreal Neurological Institute,
McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada H3A 2B4. We used positron emission
tomography to study neural mechanisms underlying intensely pleasant
emotional responses to music. Cerebral blood flow changes were measured
in response to subject-selected music that elicited the highly pleasurable
experience of "shivers-down-the-spine" or "chills."
Subjective reports of chills were accompanied by changes in heart rate,
electromyogram, and respiration. As intensity of these chills increased,
cerebral blood flow increases and decreases were observed in brain regions
thought to be involved in reward/motivation, emotion, and arousal, including
ventral striatum, midbrain, amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and ventral
medial prefrontal cortex. These brain structures are known to be active
in response to other euphoria-inducing stimuli, such as food, sex, and
drugs of abuse. This finding links music with biologically relevant,
survival-related stimuli via their common recruitment of brain circuitry
involved in pleasure and reward. Intensely Pleasant Emotional Responses
to Music Correlate with CBF modulations in Paralimbic and Other Subcortical
Brain Regions Anne J. Blood, Robert J. Zatorre Montreal Neurological
Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada We have previously
demonstrated activity in paralimbic brain regions during unpleasant
emotional responses to musical dissonance. In the present study, we
investigated neural correlates of intensely pleasant emotional responses
to music. We hypothesized that activity in paralimbic, limbic and/or
arousal systems was likely to correlate with emotional Reponses. Ten
normal, right-handed musicians underwent PET scans while listening to
self-selected, non-verbal music which they reported to consistently
produce a highly pleasurable 'shivers-down-the-spine' or 'chills' response.
Each subject also listened to a control music selection from one of
the other nine subjects, which produced minimal emotional responses.
Physiological measures (heart rate, electrodermal response, respiration,
EMG, skin temperature) were also taken during scans. Subjective ratings
of emotional intensity and intensity of 'chills' were obtained following
each scan. Regression and subtraction analyses demonstrate increased
activity (t>3.5) nucleus accumbens, midbrain, insula, thalamus, supplementary
motor area, anterior cingulate, and orbitofrontal regions during subject-selected
music. Significant CBF decreases were observed in right amygdala, left
hippocampus/amygdala, ventral medial prefrontal regions, and diffuse
regions of visual and parietal cortices. Heart rate, respiration, and
EMG increased during subject-selected relative to control music. These
findings indicate activity in reward, limbic, and arousal systems correlating
with intensely pleasant responses to music. "analysis of socially
relevant stimuli is carried out in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex"
Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol. 4, No. 7, July 2000Full Text Record
Social perception from visual cues: role of the STS region Truett Allison
"The orbitofrontal cortex is implicated in the decision-making
process. There is reason to suspect that it employs the emotional memory
of the amygdala, with its significance weighting, to influence its decisions."
Retrieved December 11, 2001, from the World Wide Web http://www.personal.dundee.ac.uk/~sxbrown/phd/neuro/orbito.htm
Sam Brown. The Nerve Centre. Last updated August 21, 1997. At 3:14 AM 1/23/98 ?0500, H Bloom wrote: Hb: >and more predictable. Another is the brain, which constantly shifts through >different settings of the kind that you have written about. In this way, the >brain acts as a kind of random possibilities generator, scanning potential >future and past scenarios in a never?ending generation of corollaries. You >can feel this at work in your own mind if you're isolated from normal social >intercourse at, let's say, a boring concert and are stuck watching the >flickering visual, motor, and emotional scenarios, many of them disturbing, >some of them tantalizing, cranked out by your ever?active brain. Most of the >scenarios generated are discarded rapidly from memory. Some stick. Bb: Of course, there has been some well?known work on sensory deprivation and its hallucinatory effects. And, if you think of the brain as a very active and very sensitive servo?mechanical physical system (as does Powers), then you get a sense that it requires sufficiently rich and structured external input in order to remain stable. If it lacks such input, its finely?tuned physical mechanisms start going out of control. So, why is it that a standard feature of meditative disciplines is to reduce sensory input to nothing or to some very stylized input (e.g. a mandala, a chant)? Clearly the objective is to achieve rock?solid stability in this circumstance. And when you do....WHAM! In a message dated 98?01?23 07:02:21 EST, You've zapped in on yet another mystery. The meditative state involves concentrating on a rhythmic pulsation, or several of them at once??a mantra and slow, ritualized breathing (see _The Relaxation Response_ for meditation's basics boiled down to a simple, universal formula). So I'd assume that meditative placidity is akin to another neural mode brought on by concentration on rhythmic entrainment??hypnosis. But what the heck IS hypnosis? [hb: 12/17/01 hypnosis is the ultimate portal through which others can enter and take over your mind. Other powerful doors for the entry of others are music, rhythm, and ritual. Meditation opens all of these entryways. It may produce peace by giving us a supreme sense of merger into the ultimate other-the secure womb of the group, of humanity, or of the cosmos. In the process, meditation may exempt us from the harsh judgement of others meted out to us by the amygdala's input to the orbitofrontal cortex. If we are one with all that is, how can anything judge us? Nothing is outside of us anymore! By the way, the rhythm of the relaxations response and of meditation is that of slow and even breathing. I suspect this is a beat of roughly 60bpm. Sixty beats per minute is also the beat of a calm heart we would sense during our most relaxed periods in the womb. And it's the beat of relaxing music.) How did it evolve evolutionarily? Why is it so different psychologically from any other brain setting we know? What is it neurologically? As for the corollary generator, yer darned right??meditation involves turning most of it off (except perhaps for some previews of one corollary we generate fairly frequently in our cultures??Nirvana). Anyone got answers to this mind?stumper? Howard P.S. For those of us following
the ways in which music and rhythm play both a social and an inter?cranial
role, the rhythmic entrainment which induces meditation and hypnosis
may provide a clue. Subj: Black Bernstein Date: 97?10?31 19:37:17 EST p. 5 of notes (CD version), Bernstein: I know when I have achieved a really good statement of a work: that is when I have the feeling throughout that I am composing it on stage, at the event. If I think at the end, "What a fine piece I wrote," then I can be reasonably certain that I have achieved a true and good document. Perhaps the fact of being myself a composer, who works very hard (and in various styles), gives me the advantageous opportunity to identify more closely with the Mozarts, Beethovens, Mahlers and Stravinskys of this world, so that I can at certain points (usually of intense solitary study) feel that I have become whoever is my alter ego that day or week. At least I can occasionally reach one or the other on our private "Hot Line", and with luck be given the solution to a problematic passage. Those are ecstatic times, those moments, and inform the entire Gestalt with new life. A new difficulty arises after giving such a "true" performance of what seems my own music, and then, suddenly, amidst applause and similar noises, having to become merely Leonard Bernstein again. * * * * * Helen Epstein. Music Talks: Conversations with Musicians. McGraw?Hill Book Company, 1987. p. 10, Horowitz talking: "The moment that I feel that cutaway ?? the moment I am in uniform ?? it's like a horse before the races. You start to perspire. You feel already in you some electricity to do something." p. 52, Leonard Bernstein talking to conducting students at Tanglewood about how he had to learn to bring himself under control. As a young conductor he once got so wrapped up in conducting ?? I think it was a Tchaikovsky symphony ?? that we was afraid he was having a heart attack. So, he's had to restrain himself. Then he gets to ego loss: "I don't know whether any of you have experienced that but it's what everyone in the world is always searching for. When it happens in conducting, it happens because you identify so completely with the composer, you've studied him so intently, that it's as though you've written the piece yourself. You completely forget who you are or where you are and you write the piece right there. You just make it up as though you never heard it before. Because you become that composer. "I always know when such a thing has happened because it takes me so long to come back. It takes four or five minutes to know what city I'm in, who the orchestra is, who are the people making all that noise behind me, who am I? It's a very great experience and it doesn't happen often enough. Ideally it should happen every time, but it happens about as often in conducting as in any other department where you lose ego. Schopenhauer said that music was the only art in which this could happen and that art was the only area of life in which it could happen. Schopenhauer was wrong. It can happen in religious ecstasy or meditation. It can happen in orgasm when you are with someone you love." The students received all this in silence. Then someone in the back of the room raised his hand. "How do you train yourself to lose your ego?" Bernstein had nothing to say about training, but made a comment about relaxed concentration. p. 73, Dorothy DeLay (violin teacher at Julliard), on teaching: "People come in with ideas about themselves ?? I'm this kind of person, I can do this, I can never do that ?? and they're unhappy with their self?concept. If you find a way to bypass that kind of thinking, they find they're better than they thought they were. I've always felt we only use a small part of ourselves." ________ ac: What if you found your way home, recognized everyone, but didn't care? hb: superb question. Where does the emotional drive that sends us into the arms of others come from. I've sketched out why it would evolve, but that's only part of the answer. What are the unasked questions implicit in your probing? a.c. Thus, it seems possible to have a concept of self and of the other - independent of the feeling state. hb: neurobiolgically, do we have any conscious or perceptual activity independent of emotion? It seems to me that emotion is the fabric on which the pattern of our thoughts is imprinted. Emotion changes the shape of the imprint. But, unless I'm wrong, all that we perceive passes through the gates of the emotional corridors the of brain--the limbic system. Everything is weiged. If it is hellish, it gets in. If it is heavenly it gets in. If it is neutral--emotionally irrelevant, it never gets past the gates and into the loops of brainwork that make for perception, consciousness, and action. There is no perception without emotion. There is no reason without feeling. Reason is a rider on the steed of feeling. Without feeling it would cease to be. ac: It might be helpful to consider also the double dissociation of facial recognition and facial affect in prospagnotic patients versus patients with orbitofrontal lesions. The mice could function quite well as former but not at all as the latter. Perhaps the behavioral responsiveness engendered by oxytocin has no necessary cognitive correlate. Conversely, we do not appear to gain much comfort from the mere recognition. Capgras syndrome might be interpreted in terms of a failure of a gut-level (i.e., implicit) social memory prior to explicit recognition. Self and other are explicitly recognized (That is my mother.) but the implicit recognition is missing (But it does not feel like my mother). The upshot is that I am not sure that the mouse study cited is particularly relevant here. hb: it's relevant if my basic proposition that self and other are inextricably intertwined. We can't have self without others. Others actually implant the substance of what we call self. We imprint on others and those imprints fix the form of the most essential self within us, the most personal private core. In the music business I worked with people who had fixated on the pictures of Ronnie Spector they'd masturbated to as teens. I worked with others who in their adolescence had found their self and their salvation in the lyrics, music, and attitude of the Who. Those music fans became major figures in the music business. But their roots made them who they were. And those roots came from fixation on the looming personalities of other human beings. Self is others, others are self. ac: More generally, the debate between a sociocentric/sociogenic and an egocentric/egogenic self goes back at least to Peirce's complaint about what he saw as the excessively internalist views of James. hb: Pierce? Could you explain more of who he was and what his views were. ac: Of course, even James - not to be easily boxed into a consistent stance - said we have as many selves as we have social situations. It is true that the sociocentric views of Baldwin and later Mead (i.e., the that self is of, by, and for the other) tended to lay fallow for the better part of the 20th century until picked up by social psychologists in the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps, of greatest interest to Howard's speculations, however, is Vygotsky's early developmental argument that the first inking of the meaning of one's own action is in the observation of the reactions of others to our actions. (Your recoiling from my threat becomes the meaning of my threat.) hb: interesting. ac: What this most fundamentally
means is the self-consciousness is an other-centered perspective on
one's own actions and experiences and is consistent with the fundamental
insights of Baldwin and Vygotsky. Noticing others noticing us literally
makes us self-conscious. hb: also interesting. ac: This conjecture is
powerfully amplified, indeed takes a new direction, if, as Arbib and
Rizolatti argue re: mirror neurons that these actions of the other are
incipient (i.e., I notice your tendency to move in ways consistent with
your recognizing what I just did). Self-consciousness is thus a very
limited outsider's view hb: that's only part of it. Einstein was one
of those I imprinted on. He exists permanently in me, but not as an
audience, as an ally and an aspiration, a goal. Yes, I perform internally
for an audience of others, but Einstein is in my performance, not outside
deploring or appauding me. Which means that others twist themselves
into the tissue of self in at least two forms, as audience and as, what,
allies? inspirations? people we indentify with? A part of the inner
core, the heart of us, the stage and spotlight, not the gallery and
bleachers. ac: of our internal states. The self emerges as a surrogate
other. (Yet it is not quite the view of the other. The other cannot
see his or her own reaction to our actions. Only we can. It seems something
new has emerged.) ac: For Peirce, what is specifically human about human consciousness is just that which is shared. For Peirce the self was a sign and as such took its meaning from its place in a network of signs. The Jamesian notion of the isolated self Peirce took to be crude and self-defeating notion. To be a self is to be a member of, and play a role in, a community. If there are parts of the self that are not communicable or play no role in the community they are superfluous and temporary. In this sense, Peirce seems to me to be at the opposite pole of the romanticism. hb: yes and no, not when you consider that a romantic tends to his personal, emotional fires until they blaze. A romantic becomes inebriated by the burst of his internal passion's flames. But the sparks from which these innner fires rise are the passion points, the imprints left by humans whose examples shaped us powerfully as we grew. Our obsessions are traces of others we once felt with full emotion. Even the animal instincts we rouse in our romantic phase are traces of others left not merely in our brain but in the genome from which the brain is formed. ac: Peirce also argued that our sense of our own personality is essentially the same as our sense of the other's personality. In the language of later schools of thought, he is saying we have no privileged access to ourselves. The positive corollary of this is that, far from being isolated from others, we can have greater insights into their personalities they themselves have. hb: the essence of the extrasomatic extensions theory of self--that we often need to go to others to complete the passage of data from the limbic system to the frontal cortex merely inches away. ac: Peirce's writing on the self are scattered through his writings, mainly on semiotics, but have been collected together in a book by Vincent Colapietro: Peirce's approach to the self, 1989, SUNY. hb: sounds very useful. Many thanks, Al.
<< Strenuous physical exercise can be used to break down individual resistance to ideas, reinforce conformity, and create a controlled milieu. >> Absolutely, Alex. William McNeill has demonstrated this brilliantly in his book Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. Cambridge, MA: 1995. Howard Rachlin has also made the same observation, presenting evidence for what I call functional bonding--bonding by participating in a deed, an act, or an extended enterprise. Functional bonding means that humans are tightly knit by more than common genes. They can be fused emotionally by working together on some element of civilization-building, something we might call--not genes or memes--but seams, the building blocks of culture and society. We bond with those who are our buddies in the goal-directed act of war, with those who help us battle to build a commercial company, and even with those we dance with at the disco on a Friday night. Disco dancing brings us into synchrony of mood and rhythm, practice for the coordination we will need when Monday comes around and we have to hold together not only our work projects but the mesh of relationships in our private lives. Now for the question. People are bonded when they eat together. When meat hits our intestines, our bowels flood us with cholecystokinin, a hormone which serves several purpose simultaneously. It signals the brain that we've managed to get the proteins and fats we need to survive. And it tells the social brain that the people we've just broken bread with are folks we should remain attached to for the rest of our lives. There's another bonding hormone of equal power, oxytocin. This opens up our sense of boundaries and allows us to feel intimate with others. Vasopressin is oxytocin's opposite. It builds barriers and makes us territorial, actively shooing others away. So far the only form of oxytocin-driven bonding which has been studied seems to be that of childbirth. When a new mother first feels her baby sucking at her nipple, her system is swamped with oxytocin. She bonds to the baby and lets her vasopressin guard down, allowing others to come close whom she would normally shoo away. What's more, she goes into a state of joy beyond imagining, one which some women I've interviewed have compared to orgasm--another hormonal weaver of intense social ties. We know that aerobic exercises, if done with sufficient stick-to-itiveness, can release endorphins in the body. But are there bonding hormones released by other shared activities? Oxytocin is one candidate. Oxytocinergic sites are planted at a great many spots within us. Evolution would not allow us to invest in such a widespread, costly physiological network if it weren't serving a critical purpose. Usually if evolution produces a system of this sort, it manages to coopt if for six or seven roles simultaneously. Is oxytocin a likely candidate as the hormone of functional bonding? Is it the torch which welds us together when we participate in creating those civilizational building blocks I've just called seams? Or is there another hormone at work here, another internal chemical whose social purposes have not yet been researched? I strongly suspect that many of the hormones which have been tracked down since Solomon Snyder and Candace Pert first discovered the receptor sites for endorphins hook us together in endeavors which build and service our societies. These hormones and the systems they control might be among the products of the genes which code for urban living and civilization--the post-Neolithic genes of sociality. Genes, hormones, shared activities, and seams--all mean that doing our share to build and maintain social structure is an imperative built into our physiology. Howard PS Let's not forget that we are not the only ones to knit in large scale societies. Bats gather in groups of 20 million. Vampire bats, less ambitious beasts, congregate in clutches of 200 or so, then trade blood for baby-sitting services and keep track of who owes a bit of blood to whom. This means they have the genes and skills it takes to manage not only social solidarity (and information sharing--for more on that see Global Brain), but also to handle complex accounting and their own form of extended trade--an intricate commerce in goods and services. Since bats are mammals, they probably share our social hormones. Prairie voles sure do. Prairie voles and mountain voles have provided us with much of what we know about the bonding hormone oxytocin and the barrier creator vasopressin--our internal equivalent of bacteria's repulsion and attraction cues. Then there are the large scale societies of spiny lobsters--10,000 marching in single file to a common destination. These 300-million year old crustaceans share social hormones which empower us--among them that vital chemical of hierarchical success, serotonin, along with GABA and opioids which produce subservience in those who lose the battle for top spot. It is conceivable that we, the mammals, and those alien looking creatures from the deep, the crustaceans, shared a common ancestor which gave us both the hormones that make us cells in a larger superorganism--a complex society. If so, the predecessor most probable arose 550 million years ago, when, in a brief burst of creativity, the DNA system which had been elaborating itself on this planet went into overdrive and created the predecessors of almost every species known today. That period of genetic profusion was the Cambrian era. The most amazing megasocieties of all are those of the bacteria, whose colonies coordinate trillions of individuals in chemically mediated choreography. Is there a relationship between the attraction and repulsion liquids these minibeasts used to communicate 3.5 billion years ago and those we use today? Could these ancestors of you and me have been the first to employ an early form of our bonding cues? Is there a relationship between N-acyl homoserine--a prime chemical coordinator in the bacterial vocabulary--and cholecystokinin, oxytocin, vasopressin, serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine and our other chemicals of sociality? A reprise: Cholecystokinin and oxytocin bond us. Serotonin calms us when we hit the top of the social ladder. Vasopressin builds our boundaries and controls our personal space. (This makes it a prime hormone of another mystery--the self.) Norepinephrine and glucocorticoids rouse us for a fight, then cripple us when we lose. Dopamine tranquilizes us and makes us accept our fate as mere followers in a crustacean, a mammalian, or a human state. These are the chemical building blocks of social structures--the internal triggers of our "seams." They build our civilizations and help us to quite literally achieve our dreams. Howard First, a note on why this posting is addressed to Eshel Ben-Jacob. In addition to his work in physics and microbiology, Eshel has been researching the self-assembly processes carried out by multiplying groups of neurons isolated in a petri dish. Surprisingly, these neurons go on about their task of tying themselves into potentially useful bundles of circuitry despite the fact that they are isolated from a body...and from its intricate construction signals. Even more surprisingly, these self-assembling neuronal circuits not only increase their number of cells and continue splicing together neuronal junctions, but also pare away connections which don't seem to fit the pattern implicit in-well, in whatever gives them their blueprints. (I suspect it's more than just genes). Now we move from the explanation of the title of this posting to…ummm…this posting… Apparently the elements of the immune system which give our interior leukocytic army a sense of who is friend and who is foe, of what is self and what is not, play a role in laying the foundations for our psyche-they help shape and reshape the developing and perpetually plastic brain. Not only does the immune system help us find our way to a true love via MHCs and their sublet perfumes, but immune system MHCs literally shape the neural illusion of identity we think of as us and the illusion of reality which envelopes us like the membrane of a cell-coloring our identity even more strongly than the apparent self of selfness Howard. Source: Harvard Medical School (http://www.hms.harvard.edu/) Date: Posted 12/18/2000 Immune Proteins Play Role In Brain Development And Remodeling; Discovery Suggests New Theory For Dyslexia, Parkinson's Disease And Multiple Sclerosis Boston, MA - December 15, 2000 - Two immune proteins found in the brains of mice help the brain develop and may play key roles in triggering developmental disorders like dyslexia and neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's Disease, according to a Harvard Medical School study reported in today's issue of Science. Although neuroscientists have recently found evidence that the brain is subject to immune surveillance, the Harvard researchers were surprised to discover the mouse brain also produces its own immune molecules, the proteins Class I MHC and CD3-zeta. In the immune system, the two proteins act as part of a lock and key system to recognize and rid the body of foreign invaders. In the brain, they may be part of a signaling system that recognizes and eliminates inappropriate neural connections. "What we find surprising and important about the results is that we found a novel use by neurons for molecules previously thought only to be the domain of the immune system," said Carla Shatz, Nathan Marsh Pusey professor of neurobiology at HMS and lead author of the study. "What are these immune molecules doing in the brain? The results of the studies imply they are being used by neurons to accomplish the normal business of neurons during development and synaptic plasticity." While the brain's early neural connections are determined by genetic instructions, the refashioning that occurs during development - and in learning - is a product of both genes and the brain's own activity. The research by Shatz and her team suggests the two immune proteins play a role in the activity-dependent remodeling of the brain. The immune proteins have been found not only in the hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with learning, and the lateral geniculate nucleus, the visual area of the brain, but also in many other regions of the brain in mice. The researchers found that mutant mice lacking either of the two immune proteins failed to undergo normal development in the geniculate nucleus. Normally, projections from the eye form a small tidy patch in the region, but in the mutants, the connections created a larger and fuzzier profile, presumably because cells in the area lacked the molecular mechanism for getting rid of the unneeded connections. "We think Class I MHC acts like an anti-glue," said Shatz. The mutant mice also experienced abnormal functioning in the hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with learning. In normal mice, production of Class I MHC is especially high in primary sensory areas of the brain - those areas that are thought to function abnormally in people with dyslexia. Further studies are expected to show if the mutant mice also have problems processing sensory information. Though the evidence is still preliminary, the research could help clarify the neurobiological dimensions of dyslexia. Preliminary studies by British researchers of families with dyslexia suggest that some of them carry genetic defects on chromosome 6 - in the same region of the chromosome that carries the Class I MHC genes. "It's very speculative at this point, but it remains certainly a possibility that this could in some way be related to their dyslexia," Shatz said. The widespread presence of MHC Class I in the brain prompts another speculation: that neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis may be the result of a misguided attack by immune cells on Class I MHC-bearing neurons. "The idea that neurons would normally be expressing Class I MHC might help explain why certain neurons die or are attacked," Shatz said. "MHC Class I-bearing neurons could be the target for an abnormal immune response. I think that people need to start thinking about that." Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Harvard Medical School for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote from any part of this story, please credit Harvard Medical School as the original source. You may also wish to include the following link in any citation: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/12/001218073628.htm _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ It is the mid summer hb: aha--this hits two subjects of our mutual contemplation for the price of one--1) what is information? and 2) are bacterial colonies conscious? As you know Buber himself
never provided defenition. hb: excellent!!! This is a rich concept. Either tandu ( meaning hb: self is an emergent property, no question about it. One mystery is how self remains the same though its constituents (cells, in the case of a bacterial colony or of a human being) change. Another question is what changes the constituents and their relationships so thoroughly that we perceive a switch from one self to another. In a multiple personality, we have shifts of the same brain and body to produce radically different selves. In a novel or a genuine life experience, we can have many situations (the catachreses, in the novel or play) which change the self without making a new self. In King Lear, Lear undergoes massive changes. Yet his "self" is still that of King Lear. In The Three Faces of Eve, on the other hand, Eve changes personalities and complete selves without changing cells. When a spritz of neurotransmitters crosses a synaptic gulf and hooks into the receptiors of another neuron, the receiving neuron is changed. It carries a sodium/potassium generated electrical charge toward its center. Yet the receiving cell's "self" remains the same. In learning, that cell can become a part of a larger group to which it did not formerly belong. But once again the "identity" of the cell doesn't alter. In most Buberian dialogs, the goal is to change the existing self, not to change from one self to another. In a seance, on the other hand, the medium attempts a temporary yet total change of self. He or she is "taken over" by the voice and personality of a person who is dead. Going back to a dialog you and I began over a year ago, one which has changed my thinking and altered my self (without changing my identity, thank goodness), information is any sort of output emitted by one source and interpreted by another. No interpretation, no information. Interpretation changes the being in which it takes place. A receiving cell shifts into an electrically active state when its receptors interpret the signals of an outside sender. I change the subject of my thinking when you send me an email like this. Then there are far larger changes in self. These are of the sort Jerome Frank discussed in his book on religious conversion and brainwashing. To achieve their goals, brainwashers and religious proselytizers used far more than dialog. They isolated their from everyone they had ever known, subjected them to overwhelming stress, and interrogated or "educated" them over a long period of time. Their targets finally succumbed by "changing their minds" in just about the most complete manner possible. Most important, the converts and subjects of brainwashing altered their worldview and vocabulary so they could leave one social group and enter another. All this, and they didn't change identity. They usually still went by the same names, among other things. To create a Buberian dialog, there has to be a major change in emergent properties. But what's the difference in a dialog which changes the emergent properties of self while leaving that self with the same identity and a dialog which alters identity? And what's the difference between "reeducating" a self and replacing it? And what, if anything, do my meandering thoughts tell us about self awareness?
In a message dated 9/1/00
10:44:54 AM Eastern Daylight Time, (Michael Parker) writes: I was good
seeing you last night, I had a good time as always. hb: I enjoyed it
mightily, but I had the feeling we were sort of picking on you. We were
all the older, wiser guys. problem is, the oldest and wisest guys in
the world are still neophytes under the skin. mp: Here's my latest approach
to recalibrating my utility sorter (I'm planning to discontinue the
anti-anxiety medication I'm taking because it makes me feel very spacey)
hb: I was wondering after everyone left if the expectation of numerous
sexual liaisons is a bit much to live up to and misguides folks about
the sources of happiness in life. it's not quantity but quality that
counts, or so it seems to me. Richard is mated to Heather. Jeff is mated
to his new wife. yet both talk about being footloose and fancy free.
does the obligatory sexual freedom of male banter really exist? or does
it cover up the fact that men are happiest in the nest of a secure relationship?
does this mean you'd be better off putting all you have into making
one relationship really work? it sure did wonders for me. mp: Recently
thinking about why I find it difficult to take action and why my utility
sorter seems tends to stay on low, I realized that in my subjective
internal experience I have a voice of doubt and pessimism operating
much of the time - "you could screw this up" "you never
get things done on time" "why do you always do this"
"she's not going to like you" "she's probably unpleasant"
hb: sounds very familiar. i supsect it's the human condition for 85%
of us or so. we just don't admit it to each other. still, there is merit
to listing all your strong points and memorizing them so you can repeat
them like a parrot, even to your self.
Elephants Recognize 'Self' By Deborah Blum Aug. 28, 2000 -- Just as a person looking into a mirror and seeing a dirty face will try to clean up, an elephant studying its reflection will try to rub smudges off its forehand with its trunk. The basic finding that elephants recognize themselves in the mirror is a startling one for scientists who had long assumed that only humans and a few higher apes were smart enough to achieve "self-recognition." Many behavioral researchers consider that ability to be a hallmark of complex intelligence. "Actually, one of the reasons I did the study was that I got tired of hearing people say that only humans and chimps do this, only humans and chimps do that," said Patricia Simonet, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Nevada in Reno. "Elephants are so smart -- I was sure they could do it." Full text:
_______________________________ In a message dated 9/18/00
8:52:56 AM Eastern Daylight Time, fentress writes: Damned if I did not
do it again. hb: I knew. I went and hit a few golf balls Saturday, then
impulsively went into that gd liquor store. I talked with an AA friend
last night, and poured it out (wasn't too much left to pour out, unfortunately).
I nearly called you, hb: please, please, John ALWAYS call me when such
things happen. you have no idea of how badly it hurt to know you were
in trouble again and that you weren't in touch. I needed you to call.
Sounds perverse, but reality is one loopy bundle of irrational paradoxes.
jf: then felt that would just be stupid. You could ask if I was drinking,
and I would be tempted to cover up (try to cover up). Not the way to
go. hb: It would have been impossible. I knew you'd been drinking from
the one sentence we had together on the phone. I am so disappointed
about this grant thing as well. But I am the one who dug the hole. I
am scheduled to go out to Oregon on Friday, to see my daughters and
a lady friend I met through a course called Landmark. I have told her
the whole story, and probably scared the hell out of her. I shall see
my Doctor tomorrow, and TRY to level with him. He is a recovering alcoholic,
so obviously he understands. I guess I am just afraid of what his advice
might be. hb: the big trick is going to be to get structure into your
life one strut at a time--to make it a bunch of small, easily handleable
steps. And, of course, to get on the path of self-control, a humongous
task. but I want to help in breaking down the momentous into easy-to-achieve
daily goals, not to mention structuring such basics as a daily routine,
a weekly routine, etc. Once the habits of routine are in place, they
give the sort of strength which bones give to the jellyfish of unsupported
muscle. Let me stop here. I know this stuff can be a burden for you.
I thank you. hb: the burden is a blessing. silence is what hurts. Howard
The Tarzan syndrome; Wright, Karen; Discover, Chicago; Nov 1996; Vol. 17, Iss. 11; pg. 88, 9 pgs THE TARZAN SYNDROME BY KAREN WRIGHT I'm the king of the swingers The jumgle VIP I've reached the top and had to stop and That's what's bothering me.... THUS BEGINS THE SYNCOPATED lament of an orangutan named King Louie in the animated film The Jungle Book. Louie is confiding his envy of the human race to the man-cub Mowgli, whom he has recently, if forcibly, befriended. Ooh be dooh, he explains. I wanna be like you/I wan ia walk like you/Talk like you, too.... At the New Iberia Research Center in southwestern Louisiana, relations between humans and apes are far less flattering. Rather than serenade a visiting hominid, certain adolescent chimpanzees are likely to fill their mouths with water and then send the fluid out between their front teeth with a faucetlike force aimed at the visitor's face, chest, or notebook. Along with the water comes a generous helping of half-chewed food and saliva. Ooh be dooh. Here's what we think of you. "Brandy, no. No; Stop that. Stop it. Kara, you too. C'mon guys. Cut it out." The demands come from Daniel Povinelli, director of the center's laboratory of comparative behavioral biology, who is wearing a smartly pressed white shirt and standing well within spitting range of the chimps' chain-link compound. He and a small crew of caretakers raised these seven apes from toddlerhood, but the animals ignore him and continue their spirited greeting. "Between the ages of four and five they start to figure out that they can control people's behavior at a distance," says Povinelli, dodging another aqueous salvo. "I used to be able to get them to stop. Now I can't even intimidate them." It is hard to imagine Povinelli intimidating anyone. The lanky, towheaded 32-year-old seems barely removed from adolescence himself as he describes or, more often, acts out the behavior he has observed in a decade of research on ape cognition. Povinelli isn't interested in the behavior as such, but he is always on the lookout for clues to the mental lives of his charges. He has carried out dozens of experiments with the New Iberia chimps to explore the way their minds represent the world. In doing so, he has discovered differences between human and chimpanzee mentalities that defy expectations and even common sense. Povinelli's work addresses the question of how-or whether-apes think about themselves and other being. Researchers of animal behavior have long suspected that certain nonhuman primates may share with humans a trait as fundamental to our species as walking and talking: self-awareness, the quality of mind that recognizes its own existence. It is self-awareness that allows enlightened individuals like Mowgli and Louie to comprehend abstract notions such as "I" and "wanna"; in the human psyche, self-awareness is coupled with an awareness of the mental lives of others, giving rise to abstract notions such as compassion, pride, embarrassment, guilt, envy, and deceit. Researchers have also assumed that apes, like humans, possess some awareness of the mental lives of others-that they have an inkling of what it means "to be like you." This assumption has shaped prevailing models of primate intelligence, which hold that complex social interactions, informed by an awareness of self and others, drove the evolution of mental acuity in human beings and their nearest phylogenetic relatives. The sociality theory has dominated studies of primate cognition for more than ten years. But Povinelli's investigations have led him to challenge that model and to propose a radical new theory of the evolutionary origins of self-awareness-one that would make King Louie proud. Povinelli believes that the key to the origins of self-awareness lies not in the social behavior of the much-celebrated chimpanzee but in the locomotive behavior of the solitary and elusive orangutan. He glimpses the dawning of self-conception not in the stresses of communal living but in the perils of traversing treetops. In 1995, Povinelli and physical anthropologist John Cant of the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine elaborated this vision in an idea they call the clambering hypothesis. Their argument is subtle and recondite, combining elements of philosophy, psychology, evolutionary biology, and physical anthropology. Its principal tenet rests, however, on the observation that the orangutan truly is, in some sense, the king of the swingers. ON A STEAMY SATURDAY IN APRIL, Povinelli lugs a three-by-three-foot mirror into the chimp compound and gives his apes a chance to eyeball themselves for the first time in about a year. Reactions vary. All the chimps are excited by the new arrivals, but some seem to understand better than others just who it is that has arrived. Apollo hoots and feints in an attempt to engage his reflection in play. Brandy fixes her gaze on the mirror while repeating a series of unusual gestures, apparently mesmerized by the simian mimic who can anticipate her every move. It is Megan, the Einstein of the cohort, who performs an eerily familiar repertoire of activities before the looking glass. She opens her mouth wide and picks food from her teeth, tugs at a lower lid to inspect a spot on her eye, tries out a series of exaggerated facial expressions. Then, assuming a not-so-familiar posture that in another primate might be considered obscene, Megan uses the mirror to draw a bead on her privates. She pokes at them with one finger and proceeds to sniff the digit with enthusiasm. "That's classic self-exploratory behavior-getting the butt right up against the mirror, where they can see, well, parts of themselves they can't ordinarily see," says Povinelli. "They never do that-get in that bizarre posture, pick at the genitals-unless there's a mirror there." Povinelli and other researchers maintain that self-exploratory behavior in front of mirrors shows that the ape recognizes the self therein. And for an animal to recognize itself, they reason, it must have a sense of self-some form, however rudimentary, of self-awareness. Thus self-recognition in mirrors, they argue, can serve as an index of selfawareness in species other than our own. The architect of this line of reasoning is psychologist Gordon Gallup of the State University of New York at Albany, who in the late 1960s devised a standard measure of self-recognition called the mark test. In the test, marks of bright red dye are applied to a chimpanzee's eyebrow ridge and opposite ear while the animal is anesthetized. The dye is odorless and nonirritating, so the chimp can't smell or feel it; nor can the chimp see the marks without the aid of a mirror. After the ape comes to, it is given a chance to check out its new look. "When they see themselves in the mirror, they do a double take," says Gallup. "Then they touch the dyed areas, then smell and look at the fingers that have contacted the marks. That's the basic test of self-recognition." The fact that chimpanzees touch the marks and then inspect their fingers is the clincher, says Gallup, for it demonstrates that the animals know the blood red spots they see in the mirror are not "out there" on some unfortunate conspecific but on their own hairy selves. Since Gallup originated this procedure, researchers have subjected dozens of animal species-including cats, dogs, elephants, and more than 20 species of monkeys-to the mark test. So far, the only subjects that have passed are the great apes: chimpanzees, orangutans, and one gorilla (the celebrated Koko). Even for members of this elite group, selfrecognition is no instant achievement. They require prolonged exposure to mirrors-from minutes to days, depending on the individual-before they begin to display self-exploratory behavior. WHEN THEY FIRST ENCOUNTER their reflections, chimps act very much as if they were confronting another chimp. Apollo's playful outbursts are typical of these social responses. Most chimps, though, soon abandon such tactics and, like Brandy, begin to perform simple, repetitive movements, such as swaying from side to side, while watching their mirrored doubles intently. At this stage, Povinelli believes, the animals may be apprehending the connection between their actions and those of the stranger in the glass; they may understand that they are causing or controlling the other's behavior. When they finally grasp the equivalence between their mirror images and themselves, they turn their attention on their own bodies, as Megan did. In some sense, says Povinelli, these chimps may be recapitulating the evolutionary drama that produced self-awareness in some ape-human ancestor. In that drama, other species never get beyond the first act. Monkeys, like many animals, seem to "understand" how mirrors work; yet they cannot solve the riddle of their own reflections. In 1978, for example, Gallup introduced a pair of macaques to a mirror, and it's been in their cage ever since. If the monkeys espy a human image in the mirror, they immediately turn to confront the person directly. But each monkey still threatens its mirror image as it would a macaque intruder. "It's not that they're incapable of responding to mirrored information-they can clearly detect the dualism as it applies to objects other than themselves," says Gallup. "But when they see themselves, they're at a complete loss." Povinelli discovered Gallup's work as a teenager while photocopying an article in American Scientist magazine for a high school debate. Along with the last page of that article, he copied the first page of an article by Gallup; he read the beginning of Gallup's paper at home and then went back to the library to finish it. "I was, I don't know, 15 or 16, and I started reading this stuff about chimps," says Povinelli. "The ape language experiments were really hot and heavy then, and I got caught up in the chimps-ashairy-human-children zeitgeist." The attitude of the time placed the cognitive faculties of monkeys, apes, and humans on a continuum, with differences between the species portrayed as matters of degree rather than kind. Koko, the captive gorilla, had done much to reinforce this view by learning American Sign Language in the early 1970s. And in the early 1980s, when young Povinelli began devouring the literature on chimp cognition, primate researchers began to document social interactions among monkeys and apes that rivaled aspects of complex human behavior. The most compelling of these interactions involve apparent deceptions-hiding food from a compatriot, for example, "crying wolf" to distract an aggressor, and concealing illicit sexual encounters. The treachery, pettiness, and politicking seems to reach an apex, as it were, in societies of chimpanzees, our closest relatives. Gallup's self-recognition studies provided a conceptual framework for these observations. It was easy to see how a keen awareness of self-including the ability to plan your actions and anticipate their effects-might come in handy if you're bent on making a chump of your fellow chimp. Furthermore, many primate researchers argued that the elaborate deceptions practiced in chimpanzee social groups offered clear evidence that the animals appreciate one another's motives and intentions as well as their own. Gallup had speculated that self-recognition implied not only self-awareness but insight into the mental states of others, a capacity known as empathy. Can tests be devised to measure empathy in primates in the same way the mark test plumbs self-awareness? That question has long preoccupied Povinelli. It became the topic of his dissertation at Yale and the principal focus of his subsequent work at the New Iberia center. The University of Southwestern Louisiana, which administers the primate center, hired the fledgling Ph.D. to set up a research program in 1991; Povinelli also established the university's Center for Child Studies, where he runs experiments that parallel his primate researchmatching the wits, in effect, of apes and children. By comparing the performances of the two species on cognitive tasks, Povinelli hopes to clarify the features of mind that distinguish people from pongids. In human beings, self-awareness and other-awareness are inextricably linked in a cognitive feature that psychologists call theory of mind. That lofty term describes the tendency to assume that other people-and also pets and even, sometimes, inanimate objects-experience desires, intentions, and beliefs just as they do. We use our assumptions about these subjective experiences to interpret behavior (as in, the dog is barking at the door because it wants to go out), to predict behavior (as in, he won't call because he's angry with me), and to judge behavior (as in, the killing was self-defense, not murder). And yes, human beings also use their theories about the minds of others to manipulate and deceive. In toddlers, these conceptions of self and other as conscious, mental agents seem to develop in tandem. "We think that theory-of-mind skills are emerging in kids right around 18 to 24 months of age," says Povinelli. "That's where you see their first understanding of desire, reference, and attention. And that's also the age at which kids first recognize themselves in mirrors." Children who can pass the mark test, for example, clearly understand conventions of nonverbal communication that require a concept of other. They understand pointing as a referential gesturea gesture meant to connect, intangibly, two or more subjects with an object in space. And they recognize that the direction of a person's gaze indicates where that person's attention is directed as well. Povinelli decided that such hallmarks of human cognitive development could serve as models for tests of empathy in primates. Could chimps understand, say, the intentions that underlie pointing and gazing in humans? He designed a series of experiments that yielded intriguing results. In one such test, a chimp has to choose between two overturned cups to find a treat underneath. An experimenter offers a hint by pointing at one cup. At first, it looked as though the apes could learn how to interpret the gesture; after several dozen trials, they picked the right cup almost every time. But additional experiments showed that the chimps were not taking their cue from the direction of the pointing finger. Instead they were choosing the cup closest to the experimenter's hand. If the experimenter held her pointing hand equidistant from the two cups, the chimps chose randomly. They seemed unable to learn the significance of pointing alone. In another experiment, Povinelli tried to ascertain whether chimpanzees' ability to track another's gaze reflects a conscious understanding of another's point of view. This time the chimps had to choose which of two boxes contained a hidden treat. An experimenter gazed at a spot midway between the receptacles. A wooden partition blocked one box from the experimenter's view, and the chimp's task was to figure out which box he could be gazing at. Children know to pick the box in front of the partition. But chimps, while they clearly register the direction of the experimenter's gaze, tend to pick the box behind the barrier almost as often as the one in front of it. "They'll follow your gaze, but there's no evidence that they understand your vision as a mental state of attention," says Povinelli. Another experiment confirmed this: given a choice between two experimenters, chimpanzees will beg for food from someone wearing a bucket over his head-someone who not only looks foolish but clearly cannot see their entreaties-as often as they will solicit a person carrying a bucket on his shoulder. Why would an animal so adept at learning in the lab fail to respond to the cues in these experiments? Povinelli acknowledges the difficulty of probing the mind of another species. With such unorthodox experimental designs, it is not always clear who is testing whom. So far, though, the results of his experiments suggest that chimpanzees don't comprehend the intentions or points of view of others-though an anthropomorphic reading of their social behavior may suggest that they do. Contrary to what Gallup believed about empathy among apes, chimpanzees may inhabit a cognitive realm that includes a subjective notion of "me" but not "you." Anecdotal accounts of chimpanzee deception, says Povinelli, can be explained without invoking the capacity for empathy-and should be, in light of his research. Chimpanzees are hardwired to be ultrasensitive to social contexts and cues, he adds; they are expert at manipulating behavior-"just like spitting at you in the compound." But while deception and manipulation indicate a powerful, specialized intelligence, they do not necessarily implicate a theory of mind. A chimpanzee can get a cheap thrill from watching a human being evade a projectile of water without knowing (or caring) why the human responds that way-without appreciating the embarrassment, annoyance, and discomfort of conducting an interview in a spit-spattered blouse with a handful of soggy pulp for a notepad. As Povinelli sees it, chimps may be self-centered in the purest sense of the word. POVINELLI'S PORTRAIT OF THE SELFcentered chimp recasts the question of how primate intelligence evolved. If his data accurately represent simian sensibilities-and he is not excluding the possibility that they don't-there is a deep cognitive chasm separating apes from humans. "It's possible that there's a disjunction, evolutionarily speaking, between self-conception on the one hand and a general theory of mind on the other," he says. "In other words, there was an understanding of self before there was an understanding of other. "Maybe chimps have a pretty good theory of their own minds, in the sense that they can contemplate what their attention is focused on, what they want, that kind of thing. But maybe they simply don't have any understanding of that quality in others. And maybe humans, for some reason, have fused an understanding of self and other." Povinelli's findings don't exactly refute the sociality theory; instead they render it somewhat less relevant. It is easy to imagine that the pressures of navigating primate social hierarchies-dodging the wrath of the dominant male, for example-may have advanced some aspects of intelligence in certain primates. Yet there is nothing about social pressures that would have driven the dawning of selfawareness per se, notes Povinelli. After all, monkeys have fairly complex social lives, and they fail the mark test. Orangutans, on the other hand, are among the most solitary of primates, yet they pass with flying colors. "No one has ever explained why on earth sociality would have anything to do with this phylogenetic break in the selfconcept," says Povinelli. In fact, there were no explanations at all for how a primitive sense of self may have evolved in the common ancestor of great apes and humans-until Povinelli went into the Indonesian jungle. In 1989 and again in 1991, Povinelli spent a field season with John Cant documenting the movements of arboreal primates in the rain forests of northern Sumatra. Cant was studying the locomotion of monkeys, gibbons, and orangutans for his research on the evolution of the primate musculoskeletal system. Though such studies are outside his own area of interest, Povinelli was eager for field experience; in particular, he looked forward to watching orangutans, which are scarce in captivity. Primatology lore holds that these large, solitary, and slow-moving apes are as smart as, if not smarter than, their phylogenetic cousins, the chummy chimpanzees. Yet if the orangutan's social life isn't responsible for its perspicacity, Povinelli began to wonder, what forces are responsible? Braving scorpions, leeches, and warm Bintang beer, he and Cant struck upon a way to explain not only the intelligence of orangutans but also the self-awareness of chimps and human beings. The clambering hypothesis was born. The idea's ungainly name derives from an equally ungainly activity unique to orangutan locomotion. As Cant defines it, clambering is the slow, deliberate navigation by which an orangutan manages to move from tree to tree. In no way, Cant contends, does clambering resemble the more automatic and repetitive movements, such as running, leaping, and swinging, that are typical of other primates. And according to his observations, clambering is the method orangutans prefer for traveling through the treetops. "When an orangutan is moving around up there," says Cant, "it sounds like a small tornado is going through the canopy-branches swaying back and forth, brushing against each other, some breaking. And if you look, quite often you see what you think is the animal stopping and making up its mind. It starts doing something, stops, pauses, andwhether or not it looks around in some befuddled human way-it then does something different." There is much in navigating treetops to give an orangutan pause. Adult males of the species can weigh upwards of 180 pounds; tree trunks and branches bow mightily under their weight, and falls can be fatal. In spite of these risks, Sumatran orangutans rarely, if ever, travel on the ground. They climb from tree to tree like sluggish acrobats, using the exceptional mobility of their hip and shoulder joints to distribute their mass among multiple supports. It is not unusual to see an orangutan grasping a woody vine with one hand, holding a branch with the other, and bracing one foot against a tree trunk while the other reaches for a nearby limb. By shifting their weight back and forth, orangutans can bend a tree to their will, making it sway closer to its neighbors and thus aid passage. None of these maneuvers were lost on Povinelli. While becoming acquainted with orangutan locomotion, he was also boning up on the work of Jean Piaget. The Swiss psychologist had described the dawning of self-conception in children as arising from the inadequacy, or "failure," as he put it, of the sensorimotor system. In Piaget's theory, this system governs the repetitive and seemingly instinctual movements of infants younger than 18 months or so. Before that age, Piaget argued, children are not conscious of causing their own actions. But as a child's mental life becomes more complex, those actions become more ambitious, and some will inevitably fail to provide the intended outcome. Confronted with such failures, children become conscious of both their actions and their intentionsthey become, in a word, self-aware. Somewhere around the age of two they also enter a new stage of development, in which they learn to control and plan the outcome of their actions. "When we got to the field and started talking about clambering," says Povinelli, "it suddenly struck me that that, in a way, may be the same damn thing. Clambering is the failure of the sensorimotor system, in an evolutionary sense." In Povinelli and Cant's hypothesis, clambering represents the self-aware locomotive style of a common ancestor of humans, chimps, orangutans, and gorillas. Like orangutans, this ancestor probably lived in the trees and weighed at least three times as much as the most massive tree-dwelling monkey. Climbing procedures scripted by the sensorimotor system-exemplified by the limited repertoire of repetitive movements that characterize monkey locomotion-would most likely have failed the ancestor, much as they would fail present-day orangutans. And in this context, failure meant an express trip of 30 feet or more to the forest floor. Fall flat: on your face from a height of a few dozen feet for a few million years, say Povinelli and Cant, and sooner or later you will evolve the capacity to figure out what went wrong. Figuring that out means conceiving of the self as a causal agent: understanding that the breaking of boughs and subsequent plummeting action is caused by one's own heft, inexpertly deployed. "Once this sense of personal identity and agency emerges," the coauthors have written, "an understanding of that object (the self) can be elaborated and expanded upon almost indefinitely." It is this budding awareness of the self as a causal agent that Povinelli sees in his chimpanzees' antics in front of mirrors. Reflections give the apes an opportunity to observe the direct consequences of their actions: "I caused that." Self-recognition occurs when an ape understands that it causes everything about its mirror double: "I am that." For monkeys, it seems, there is no "I." Povinelli and Cant assert that tree-to-tree travel was never hazardous enough for monkey ancestors to warrant the evolution of a specialized cognitive coping mechanism. Because of these ancestors' low body weight, falls would have been infrequent and not particularly harmful. "Monkeys jump onto the end of the branch, and when it bends on them they just hold on," says Povinelli. "It's the difference between assimilating the reaction of the environment into your behavior and actively using your behavior to plan how to change the environment in order to solve a particular problem. You don't need to have a sense of self to do what you have to do to be a monkey." Having elaborated this distinction between monkeys and apes, however, Povinelli emphasizes that his claims for ape self-awareness are still quite modest. "It's nothing like, `My God, I'm an orangutan. I'm an orangutan, and gosh, I was born 17 years ago, and here I am, still up in the trees, climbing. I wonder what my fate is?"' says Povinelli. "We're just arguing that a combination of factors drove the evolution of an ability to objectify the self-the first step," he says, "along the road to self-discovery." Qualifiers aside, Povinelli and Cant are well aware that they are out on a rather fragile limb themselves. The clambering hypothesis is by far Povinelli's most speculative piece of work to date, and it has garnered more than a few hoots from other naked apes. "We hardly know what self-awareness is, let alone how it came about," says ethologist Frans de Waal, research scientist at the Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta. "I am personally not convinced by the argument." De Waal believes that the climbing behaviors of several species of South American spider monkeys may be as complex and premeditated as the clambering of orangutans. "I don't think orangutans are doing anything that these monkeys don't do." De Waal also objects to defining self-awareness so narrowly "I look at self-awareness as a kind of continuum that probably runs from fish to humans," he says. "The mirror test somehow taps into a higher level of it. But I cannot imagine that this is an allor-nothing phenomenon." "This is what I say to people who are extremely skeptical about the clambering hypothesis," says Povinelli. "I say, well, okay, fine. But there's a real problem here. Self-recognition in mirrors is restricted to the great ape-human clade. There's no other proposal on the table that explains why. "That doesn't mean," he adds, "that the clambering hypothesis is right." Indeed, even claims of mirror selfrecognition in apes have come under fire of late. Using a modified version of the mark test, cognitive neuroscientist Marc Hauser of Harvard has prompted unusual behavior in tamarins that he says could be taken as a sign of self-recognition. "I want to remain kind of agnostic about what's actually going on," says Hauser. But he says his observations cast doubt on the long-standing notion that mirror self-recognition is a reliable marker for self-awareness. Povinelli says he and Gallup have tried to replicate Hauser's work in marmosets, so far with no success. But he is the first to admit that he doesn't have the final word on either self-recognition studies or primates' concept of self. "The problem. seems so simple, you know? A mirror, a monkey. . . a mirror, a chimp.... But there's three decades' worth of work to be done in figuring out what the heck's going on. "Anybody who thinks that they've got the final word on this"-Povinelli pauses to engage his own theory of mind-"I think they're stark raving mad." Reproduced with permission
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_________ Howard In a message dated 12/13/2002 1:29:20 PM Eastern Standard Time, buck writes: I suspect that the road from consciousness to the immune system proceeds through emotion, and particularly, emotional communication. Emotional communication has bioregulatory functions in both animals and human beings that can influence health in great part via the immune system. It is clear that the immune system can be altered by events, but the life events literature indicates that "good" as well as "bad" events can be disruptive. The strongest and most consistent finding is that social support enhances health. I suggest that emotional communication plays a critical role: social support usually enhances emotional communication, while even "good" events (a promotion, a move) can disrupt emotional communication, and therefore the immune system. Recognizing the influence of emotional communication can also answer discrepancies in the Type-A behavior pattern (TABP) literature. Although Type A's in general are at increased risk from CV disease, some Type-As are actually quite healthy. Also, therapy programs aimed at changing the TABP are usually pretty effective in altering physiological responding in positive ways. I suggest that the expressed hostiliy associated with the TABP usually disrupts the formation of close relationships, but if the Type-A person is in fact able to form strong social ties, he/she is OK (the partner may be another question!). And, the therapy programs (indeed, virtually ALL therapy programs of whatever theoretical orientation) have as their essence enhanced emotional communication. One of the compelling findings in this area is that war actually leads to fewer pre-term and low-weight births: war is, presumably, "stressful," but the social solidarity, and therefore emotional communication associated with war may overcome negative effects. References: Bovard, E. (1959). The effects of social stimuli on the response to stress. Psychological Review, 66, 267-277. Buck, R. (1984). The Communication of Emotion. New York: Guilford Press. Korean Edition published by NANAM Publishing House, Seoul, 2000. Buck, R. (1993). Emotional communication, emotional competence, and physical illness: A developmental-interactionist view. In H. Traue and J. W. Pennebaker (Eds.), Emotional expressiveness, inhibition, and health. (pp. 32-56). Seattle, WA: Hogrefe and Huber. Ross Buck Ph.D. Professor of Communication Sciences and Psychology Communication Sciences U-1085 University of Connecticut At 12:57 AM 12/13/2002
EST, HBloom wrote: >In a message dated 12/12/2002 10:06:14 PM Eastern
Standard Time, >[email protected] writes: > >How far
can we go in injecting consciousness into that loop? > > >
> Anti-depressants may aid that end too. > >Group therapy,
church-going, volunteer work in a hospital, in a school, in >a mentoring
program, or in an elderly care facility, and any other activity >that
ties us into a social loop can do wonders. > > Howard Meanwhile our emotions
ebb and flow roughly seven times a day. When we're on the depressive
end, which things and people do we dwell on? When we're up to normal
and happy, who means what to us? The meanings of figures should change
depending on our moods. Do the figures in our minds change as well?
Is there a switch of the cast, the stage, and of the play when we swing
from insecurity to confidence? Howard In a message dated 3/22/2003 10:56:57
AM Eastern Standard Time, shovland writes: I would expect that a lot
of the "information" zipping around this network would be
emotional, ranging from intense admiration for a source of imprinting
to intense loathing for a toxic authority figure. Some of this would
come into consciousness when people do the "Soul Map" exercise. This is a theory I've spent four years developing and haven't published yet. But our need to rush to others when we're in turmoil is a manifestation of our connection to a mass IQ. Even in our moments of confusion we are feeding data into a collective intellect, a global maintenance, change, upgrade, and innovation skein. We could discuss this if you like. I can explain it doing a visual demonstration and connecting it with the collective brainwork of bacteria, ants, and chimps. ep: What about the relevance of senses then. Are we really moving from a nasal mammiferes towards a visual minded society. hb: we're discovering that we are guided by smell much more than we think. We're also discovering that we have senses we're not aware of. We have blind sight, a sight that presents no panorama, no flash of light, no movie to the conscious self but can guide us around barriers nonetheless. We have two forms of skin touch receptors. One set goes to the conscious brain and tells us that our arm is being stroked gently. Another set goes straight to the limbic system and makes us feel good emotionally without bothering to "explain" why to our conscious brain. Our "smell" of pheromones is one of these unconscious sensory modalities. It works through a part of the nose that's separate from our smell receptors--the vomeronasal membrane. We're totally unaware of smelling pheromones, but their influence is potent. They can drastically alter our moods and reset such basic things as menstrual cycles. We are just discovering a whole new realm of the unconscious--one far beyond that Freud ever conceived. It's a dark, deep pool of processes that have never been revealed to us consciousnessly. We've never even had the chance to suppress or repress them. Our culture, a 35,000 year enterprise, is now putting them on the map of human possibility for the very first time. There's a new frontier inside us we're just beginning to describe. By the way, I just started a new scientific group called The Science of the Soul Inititiative. Below is a desription and a brief list of members and their credits. My goal is to bring the passionate aspects of the human psyche from the periphery to the center of scientific attention. ep: What about the role of AI and robots. hb: robots are demonstrating that distributed intelligence--cas--complex adaptive systems--work far better than linear, traditional computers. AI is linear, and it's largely failed to live up to its promise. It's been a 20 year demonstration that the "rational choice" model of the mind is radically off base. The irrational model is now one we have to pursue. This is true of robots too. You can build a mind by putting millions or billions of agents with micro-intelligence together and letting them duke it out in a Darwinian way. In my estimation, they'll solve far more problems that the qubits of quantum computing any day of the week. This, in fact, is the secret to survival of the brightest nanacomputer of them all--a bacterial colony. Modern humans have been here for a mere 100,000 years. Bacteria have been with us for 3.5 billion years. We've been here roughly 5,000 generations. They've been around for 97 trillion generations--longer than any other form of life on earth. Why? Their research and development system outpaces that of the most microchipped and lab-equipped human beings. They outrace us because they out-innovate us. Their collective cleverness surpasses our vaunted creativity. ep: Why do bacteria with hardly anysenses at all survive longer than we do with so many hb: the answer is what Osama bin Laden's been using--paralled distributed nets. ep: And I am still worried at not finding an answer to Newtons question Through which modes does a perception of the Universe in the brain, become the magnificent glory of colours. O r sensations. hb: in technical terms, why do some senses have qualia and others have no qualia at all? Why do we have unsensed senses like the blind sight and blind touch I mentioned above? Hb: We're still too ignorant to be able to answer that question. I act as a kind of switchboard for many who are doing disparate, cutting-edge research within the scientfic community. I've been putting the pieces of the unconscious sensory self together in the course of the last year and funneling my overviews back to those who are hidden in their own corners of research. It's knowing how much of our brainwork we DON'T perceive that's making the mystery of conscious perception glow a little bit brighter and show a little bit more hope of a solution. ep: Howard, can we do anything without incentives. hb: without the incentives we normally think of as economic? Hb: Yes. Do we even understand the incentives we work for economically? No. We could if we wanted to, but until now very few have attempted the task. It's one of the subjects I'm working on...the hidden motivators behind what we call capitalism and economics. It isn't hard to motivate us. What's hard is to DEmotivate us. We have built-in motivators in our brain...built-in incentive generators. Stop us dead in our tracks, take us out of the loop, wrap us up and put us in an immersion tank, seal us off quietly, temperature control us, coddle us and cradle us, strip us of contact with the outside world, and we go nuts. Our incentive generators are dying for something to grab hold of, something to turn into a puzzle or a goal. We have centers like the nucleus accumbens that ache for novelty and for the pleasure of a gamble, of a fling, a far-out bet, a risk, a thrill. Lock three humans in a jail cell and they'll start betting on the cockroaches climbing up their walls. We're obsessive incentive makers. We can't help it. No risk, no excitement. No goal, no purpose, no meaning, no life. ep: And are senses the way for incentives to work. hb: no. the senses are part of it, though. They're part of a 100-billion-cell parallel-distributed-processing center whose engines are the limbic system--the emotions, the passion points. I've been mapping the development of those passion points, those primal self-motivators out for roughly 20 years now. The senses are embedded in a rich context. We're nodes of the vast processing mesh of a society. We're nodes of a multigenerational mass rumination called culture. Culture tells us how to touch, to feel, to see. Then we get it emotionally. A single sensor in the skin or retina is part of a mesh that extends not just globally, but goes back 3.5 billion years in time. ep: If people were not fond of making love would there be reproduction, hb: you've hit it. Pleasure and pain are the great motivators. But they are the primary emotions on which other key feelings, like insecurity, fear of rejection, and the desire to impress, are based. Apparently pain evolved before pleasure. So pleasure is a recent evolutionary gift. But insecurity, the fear of rejection, and the desire to impress are emotions with deep implications, emotions we scientists usually fail to address. ep: or for that matter survival if the food had not been tasty. Being so close to other animals, and knowing that a snake perception of the universe, or that of a bee is so different from ours can we realy generalise about senses. hb: we need, as you imply, to learn a good deal more about how our cousins in the clan of dna perceive their world. You've seen the online simulations of a bee's-eye view of the world. It's primitive, but it's a start. Does a bee get startled by what it sees? Does it find aesthetic thrills in the sight of a new flower? Does it get the blues and blaahs when it acts depressed? How does it feel about what it sees? Or is its sight like our blindsight...a sense that doesn't bother to wear the trappings of consciousness? ep: Please keep the appointment despite the elucubrations above hb: you've made me more eager than before. These are challenging questions, Eduardo. All my thanks for stimulating me. Howard The Science of the Soul Initiative The Science of the Human Soul--the neuroscientific, endocrinological, and evolutionary understanding of ecstatic experiences, transcendent experiences, artistic raptures, revelatory moments, muses, passion, creativity, religion, spirit, misery, music, dance, love, laughter, tears, and poetry. founding members: Dr. Munawar A. Anees-Nobel Prize nominee, Former Education Minister of Malaysia, Founding Editor of Periodica Islamica, Founding Editor of The International Journal of Islamic and Arabic Studies, member of the Royal Academy of Jordan for Islamic Civilization Research, member of the UNESCO Group of Intellectuals of the World; author of "Islam and Biological Futures: Ethics, Gender and Technology", "Guide to Sira and Hadith Literature in Western Languages", "Christian-Muslim Relations: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow", "Health Sciences in Early Islam: Collected Papers of Sami K. Hamarneh", "The Kiss of Judas: Affairs of a Brown Sahib", "Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism", and "Computers Don't Byte" Ross Buck--Professor of Communication Sciences and Psychology, University of Connecticut. Author of: Human Motivation and Emotion. New York: John Wiley & Sons; The Communication of Emotion. New York: Guilford Press. William Benzon--Cognitive scientist, Associate Editor of The Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems. Former consultant to NASA. Author of Beethoven's Anvil: Music in Mind and Society--executive edited by Howard Bloom. Howard Bloom--Visiting Scholar--New York University; Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder: Science of the Soul Initiative; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society of Human Ethology; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding council member, The Darwin Project; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor--New Paradigm book series Walter Freeman--Walter J. Freeman Neurophysiology Lab, UC Berkeley, author How Brains Make Up Their Minds and Neurodynamics: An Exploration in Mesoscopic Brain Dynamics and Society of Brains Valerius Geist--Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, University of Calgary; President Wildlife Heritage Ltd.; Author or editor of thirteen books, including: Mountain Sheep (1971, U. Chicago Press); Life Strategies, Human Evolution, Environmental Design. Towards A Biological Theory Of Health (1978, Springer-Verlag, New York); Pronghorns-The Last Americans; Moose: Behavior, Ecology, Conservation; Buffalo Nation: History and Legend of the North American Bison; author: 115 technical & professional papers; over 160 popular articles & book chapters; 40 encyclopedia entries in 16 encyclopedias; 7 documentary films Russell Gardner- Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. President of the Across-Species Comparisons and Psychopathology Society. Co-editor, The Neuroethology of Paul MacLean: Frontiers and Convergences (Praeger). Neil Greenberg--Director, Howard Hughes Medical Institute/University of Tennessee, Division of Biology Threshold Honors Program in Biology. Faculty and Chair, University Studies Transdisciplinary Program. Deputy Chair University Focus Area for Intellectual and Cultural Expression, Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science. Founder of the Art and Organism program. Ziad Nahas--Medical Director, Brain Stimulation Laboratory Institute of Psychiatry, Medical University of South Carolina, Researcher on fMRI and transcranial magnetic stimulation Mortimer Ostow, M.D.--Member, The American Psychoanalytic Association. Visiting Professor Emeritus of Pastoral Psychiatry at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Author: Need to Believe; Myth and Madness; and Ultimate Intimacy; co-author, Jewish Mystical Leaders and Leadership in the Thirteenth Century Jaak Panksepp-- Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Psychology Bowling Green State University. Author of Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (Series in Affective Science); editor of Advances in Biological Psychiatry; co-editor (with Manfred Clynes) of Emotions and Psychopathology David Pincus, Ph.D., Assistant Clinical Professor, School of Medicine, Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve University. Founder: Visions Of Mind And Brain. Peter J. Richerson-- Department of Environmental Science and Policy, UC Davis; co-author (with Robert Boyd), Culture and the Evolutionary Process, co-editor, Human by Nature: Between Biology and the Social Sciences John Skoyles--Neurobiologist, co-author with Dorion Sagan of Up From Dragons, the Evolution Of Human Intelligence, executive edited by Howard Bloom Jordan Peterson--Department of Psychology University of Toronto, author of Maps Of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, Routledge, 1999 David Smith-Director, The New England Institute David Sloan Wilson--Professor of Biological Science, Binghamton University (SUNY), author of The Natural Selection of Populations and Communities, co-author with Elliott Sober of Unto Others: the evolution of altruism (Harvard University Press, 1997), and author of Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (University of Chicago Press, 2002). Nicholas Bannan--University of Reading, England. Developing a research group/project whose function is to illustrate that language evolved in partnership with musical responses the 'hardware for which had already adapted in response to selective pressures. A voice researcher, composer and educationist. The team also includes Steven Mithen, an archaeologist; Paul Robertson, a violinist and music psychologist; Jonathan Dunsby, a music analyst; Rolf Gehlhaar, a composer who is developing AI instrumentation for performing and music therapy work; Daniel Schneck, bio-engineer, at Virginia Tech; and Ian Cross, a music technologist who is very much into cognitive psycho-acoustics. We are also setting out to develop links with the Institute for Biomusicology in Sweden. Warmest regards Eduardo ---------- Retrieved From the Worldwide WebNovember 23, 2002 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/11/021122073858.htm Source: Queen's University Date: 11/22/2002 "Here's Looking At You" Has New Meaning: Eye Contact Shown To Affect Conversation Patterns, Group Problem-Solving Ability Noting that the eyes have long been described as mirrors of the soul, a Queen's computer scientist is studying the effect of eye gaze on conversation and the implications for new-age technologies, ranging from video conferencing to speech recognition systems. Dr. Roel Vertegaal, who is presenting a paper on eye gaze at an international conference in New Orleans this week, has found evidence to suggest a strong link between the amount of eye contact people receive and their degree of participation in group communications. Eye contact is known to increase the number of turns a person will take when part of a group conversation. The goal of this study was to determine what type of "gaze" (looking at a person's eyes and face) is required to have this effect. Two conditions were studied: synchronized (where eye contact is made while the subject is speaking) and random contact, received at any time in the conversation. The Queen's study showed that the total amount of gaze received during a group conversation is more important than when the eye contact occurs. The findings have important implications for the design of future communication devices, including more user-friendly and sensitive video conferencing systems - a technology increasingly chosen in business for economic and time-saving reasons - and Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) which support communication between people and machines. Dr. Vertegaal's group is also implementing these findings to facilitate user interactions with large groups of computers such as personal digital assistants and cellular phones. The eye contact experiment used computer-generated images from actors who conveyed different levels of attention (gazing at the subject, gazing at the other actor, looking away, and looking down). These images were presented to the subjects, who believed they were in an actual three-way video conferencing situation, attempting to solve language puzzles. The researchers concluded that people in group discussions will speak up more if they receive a greater amount of eye contact from other group members. There was no relationship between the impact of the eye contact and when it occurred. "The effect of eye gaze has literally fascinated people throughout the ages," says Dr. Vertegaal, whose paper, Explaining Effects of Eye Gaze on Mediated Group Conversations: Amount or Synchronization? was presented this week at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. "Sumerian clay tablets dating back to 3000 BC already tell the story of Ereshkigal, goddess of the underworld, who had the power to kill Inanna, goddess of love, with a deadly eye," says Dr. Vertegaal. "Now that we are attempting to build more sophisticated conversational interfaces that mirror the communicative capabilities of their users, it has become clear we need to learn more about communicative functions of gaze behaviours." Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here. Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote any part of this story, please credit Queen's University as the original source. You may also wish to include the following link in any citation: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/11/021122073858.htm Copyright © 1995-2002 ScienceDaily Magazine | Email: [email protected] In a message dated 11/25/2002 5:03:50 AM Eastern Standard Time, n.j.c.bannan writes: The act of singing, when entered into such as to capture most efficiently the flow of breath and the resulting resonances perceived both aurally and as sensations in the hard tissue able to respond, also 're-sets the face'. hb: very intriguing. nb: This is why I have found it so extraordinary that the proposals as to musical origins of human communication, especially language, which one finds in nineteenth century authors such as Darwin, Helmholtz and Nietzsche, were barely carried on in, for instance, post-Saussure linguistics, yet remain alive and well throughout twentieth century voice teaching from the final publication of Garcia through to the synthesis of science and practice one encounters in Sundberg and Thurman. I would urge anyone wanting to develop their understanding of this phenomenon to talk to an effective, scientifically-informed singing teacher. Linguistics and social psychologists seem, by comparison, barely interested in the means by which language is physically produced. So 100 years of research has been inhibited by a prevailing orthodoxy which Science of the Soul should prove to be a cul-de-sac. Nicholas ----- Original Message ----- From: HBloom Subject: extrasomatory extensions of the self Bill--This is wonderful material. We make a face to meet the faces that we meet, said TS Eliot. Ekman says that the face we make resets our moods. You've just added a new dimension to something I've been working on for several years, a little thing called The Extrasomatory Extensions of the Self. Here's a precis of the concept: The Extrasomatory Extensions of Self concept. Let's start with where this is in the brain. The brain is not what we've made it out to be. Much of the stuff of mind we think is located in the brain is actually spread all over the place. Our moods are shifted by our adrenal cortices--way down in the small of your back. They are tinged by the connection between those cortices, the hypothalamus, and the gonads (the HPA--hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis). Our thinking and feeling involve our "gut brain"--the enteric nervous system. They rope in our muscular sense of things, which means our arms, legs, torso, and even the muscles in our stomach help us think or feel our way through the maze of life. And much of our thinking and feeling is tied to our relationships to other humans. To make the location of brainwork even more confusing, the brain is made up of many independent sub-assemblies, each of which has a mind and a style all its own. Getting these parts to agree is a difficult task. In fact, all too often we fail to achieve it. So the self is everywhere and nowhere. In a sense it may be like a center of gravity. The center of gravity in this solar system is an invisible and in a sense non existent point where the mass of the nine planets, all the interplanetary junk, and the sun centers. Though this point has no physical existence, it's real as hell. Any passing batch of glunk--a comet, for example--will be grabbed by it and irresistibly drawn to rotate around it--not around that great big ball of glowing stuff called the sun, but around the central point where the gravity of the whole system and all its parts come to an imaginary meeting point. The self is like the meeting point of an even more complex mob of elements. So, like the center of gravity, it exists somewhere and nowhere simultaneously. We'd find the most prominent element in the left prefrontal cortex, where the "narrator" resides. However that inner narrator is only a spokesman for a summation of the invisible meeting point of right cortex, limbic system, parietal lobes, stomach, arms and legs, and myriads of overlapping social systems that rotate like planets around us. When we lose our time/space map of those planets, we lose our self. The essence of the extrasomatic extensions theory of self--that we often need to go to others to complete the passage of data from the limbic system to the frontal cortex merely inches away. Crises of confusion and stress drive humans to seek out others with whom they can talk out their problems and get a sense of comfort-plus, if they're lucky, a way of solving the catastrophe du jour. The balance between the amygdala and the hippocampus produce the phenomenon of the extrasomatory extensions of self-going to others to interpret the uproar going on just a few inches behind the verbal brain. That, in turn, drives us into the web of the collective intelligence. In looking for a shoulder we can cry on, we contribute our confusion as a new bit of data the group can ponder and from which it can learn. Groups that learn this way out-survive groups that don't. And groups that learn this way succeed in building the most adaptive culture, the most adaptive system of overarching beliefs and the most adaptive kit of the micro-sayings that help empower the members of a society…phrases like "now we're operating on the same page," "he's not with the program," "I've got to get my act together," "shit or get off the pot," "she blindsided me," "he's jerking me around," "stop fucking with my head," and "out of the frying pan into the fire." Come up with the clichés that fit your situation and you may well be able to get the hippocampus off it's ass and put it back to work gagging that pain in the touchas torture-master, the amygdala. Lederman, Regina P., Relationship of anxiety, stress, and psychosocial development to reproductive health Vol. 21, Behavioral Medicine, 09-01-1996, pp 101-112
Hannes--first off, it's a pleasure to hear from you. Too much time has passed since we last tossed ideas and gemutlichkeite around. he: As usual, I attempt to be a Spielverderber. I think both Thackeray, Alice, and a few others (among them Rilke, who claimed having written his "Kornett .." during one night in Prague) are mystifying their achievements. I used to teach a course in "How to write scientific papers" and had the students suggest reasons for doing so. Only a few came up with the notion of clarifying their ideas. Writing trims one's ideas, weeding out absurdities, repetitions, oxymorons, ridiculous formulations (if not intended), lets arguments stand out, etc. Particularly if you follow one of the slogans I taught my students: "Write for morons!" hb: a heartily agreed yes. writing clearly and with gusto forces you to clarify your thoughts--and to toss out those that are mere tangles of jargon, sound and fury signifying nothing. yet there's also a flush of new ideas that come popping out when you know you have an audience for your words--especially an encouraging or infuriating reader or listener. The notions and concepts that emerge are thoughts you didn't know you had. In fact, there's a good chance these are insights that would never have passed your mind if the magic an audience supplies had not snapped their elements together on the tip of your tongue or pen. Howard
Crises of confusion and stress drive humans to seek out others with whom they can talk out their problems and get a sense of comfort-plus, if they're lucky, a way of solving the catastrophe du jour. The balance between the amygdala and the hippocampus produce the phenomenon of the extrasomatory extensions of self-going to others to interpret the uproar going on just a few inches behind the verbal brain. That, in turn, drives us into the web of the collective intelligence. In looking for a shoulder we can cry on, we contribute our confusion as a new bit of data the group can ponder and from which it can learn. Groups that learn this way out-survive groups that don't. And groups that learn this way succeed in building the most adaptive culture, the most adaptive system of overarching beliefs and the most adaptive kit of the micro-sayings that help empower the members of a society…phrases like "now we're operating on the same page," "he's not with the program," "I've got to get my act together," "shit or get off the pot," "she blindsided me," "he's jerking me around," "stop fucking with my head," and "out of the frying pan into the fire." Come up with the cliches that fit your situation and you may well be able to get the hippocampus off it's ass and put it back to work gagging that pain in the touchas torture-master, the amygdala. Does this sound accurate
to those of you who specialize in neurobiology? Howard ________ At 10:14 PM 12/6/2001, Howard Bloom wrote: According to Regina Lederman, "The hippocampus appears to modulate or play an inhibitory role in the activity of the amygdala." My guess would be that the logical, verbal, conscious brain can quiet the amygdala's alarm signals if it gets a handle on the problem of the moment and says things are under control. The amygdala's sense of control has a lot to do with the cultural cliches in the mental tookit of the amygdala-owner. If those cliches provide an easy way to solve a problem, no sweat (sweat is produced by stress). If the problem at hand isn't covered by the cliché-kit of the culture, the verbal brain has no instant way of grappling with the dilemma. The dilemma becomes a crisis. The amygdala doesn't have the ammunition it needs to shut up the amygdala. Stress hits big time. Or one could say that the hippocampus is just the amygdala's way of modulating its own activity. What really gets the amygdala going is ambiguity. The amygdala cannot tolerate ambiguity. hb: yup. there's quite a bit of evidence supporting your view, Al. ac: And what really sets the amygdala off are ambiguous threats. One view is that the amygdala is ultimately an ambiguity detector. hb: neat. and it's ambiguity that drives us into the arms of others. in the heyday of the Roman Empire, citizens would travel from Britain to Delphi to get an inescapable ambiguity resolved. They'd hope that the Delphic Oracle would clear the things nagging them up. The amygdala's ambiguity alarm and the emotional ouch it produced drove humans to travel roughly 2,000 miles back and forth to clear up something the frontal lobes couldn't figure out...or things the frontal lobes had figured out an answer to, but needed a seal of approval from others, especially authoritative others, the others with the biggest "attention surplus." 2,000 miles to get an itch in the amygdala scratched by satisfying the frontal lobes and their verbal, cultural centers. That's a considerable stretch outside the skull to put one brain part in harmony with another that's just four to five inches away. Al, this makes the amygdala a potent social knitting needle, a gadfly that drives us into the arms of others and puts another stitch or two in the social lace and adds another dendrite to the collective brain. ac: The extended amygdala, including such structures as the Nucleus Basalis of Meynert, once activated, constitute a threat activated vigilance system lowering and biasing thresholds for further threat cues, evolved and learned. These can be further honed to greater precision through context sensitivity - enter the hippocampus. Actually, the bias probably works in a dual fashion also lowering thresholds for safely cues as well, which would fit your cultural scenarios. Cultures to be effective would need to provide reliable safety cues and be contexts in which the cues are effective. Having others who can resonate to the fear-exorcising platitudes might be sufficient or, at least, ameliatorive. Even "Wilson" in Castaway seemed to have this effect despite being rather nonresponsive.(1) Perhaps, what Wilson had going for him, despite his evident lack of social skills, were his obvious links to the native culture of the castaway. You might enjoy:. Whalen, P. J. (1998). Fear, vigilance, and ambiguity: Initial neuroimaging studies of the human amygdala, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 7, 1797, 188. hb: alas, none of my online resources will give me this article. It sounds intriguing. Meanwhile, please tell me the story of Wilson. Thanks, Al. Howard the theory of the extrasomatory
extensions of the self and how it applies to intimate relationships--particularly
to the joys and terrors of falling in love--and to the manner in which
one forms an enduring relationship. John Skoyles 12/03/01 wrties: Before we link aspects of mind such as 'self' to biological and cultural components, we must be more reductive - at least from a brain point of view. Put yourself in the shoes of the brain. Its problem is discovering what it is yoked to Hb: so even the brain is an exile in the body. How could that be? Brains presumably evolved from gaglions cells generated as coordinators, as in the long line of individual micorpocesssing center at each pair of legs along a lobster's neural spine. The brain is rather different from these distributed processing offices in that most of its wiring goes from one brain cell to another and has no direct contact with the sensors that pump us what we think of as "the outside world." Another way of saying this is that what we think of as the outside world is a construction modeled somehow in neuronal groupings and their interchanges. But the brain puts a premium on internal communication, isolating it more than sub-brains like the enteric gut-brain. Is this what we're talking about when we say the brain has to try out various hypotheses to comprehend the body it resides in? Js: and so can shape behaviourally. The body is an obvious one - the brain does not wake up each day with a different one Hb: actually a considerable number of cells the brain wakes up with each day are newcomers to the body, born overnight and allowed to grow into their space. Aging also changes the body, but quite a bit more slowly. Js: - but if we think about it not the body is not its only yoked continuity. Reputation - the perceptions of others also create a continuity it has to happen [Bloom's PR theory of the brain's embodiment]. Virtual reality shows that the brain can experience continuities that exist purely in a computer algorithm. Flocks, shoals, jazz jams and team games that the brain is yoked to a place or role in a larger continutity. Hb: good point. My kid spends hours on a computer playing games. The pixels, software, mouse, keyboard and monitor become extensions of his self. They are new realities his brain must model, then incrorporate. Our tools rapidly become extensions of us. When we use a hammer enough to get used to it, we feel where its heft and head are as surely as we feel another extension, our arm and hand. When we get used to a keyboard, it becomes an extension of our self. Put us at a keyboard whose feel is different and we struggle to get the brain to adjust to this new and uncomfortable extension, to get used to it until we make it a part of us. Js: Though the continuity is these things might be mediated proximally through that of the body, distally at the level information processing, the continuity that the brain works upon exists apart and beyond it. Hb: more good points.
Howard hb: and even more wheels than at first it seems. the genome is also a model of the world, a compressed set of models that over evolutionary time have proven their ability to survive in the changing environments of this planet for roughly 3.85 billion years. the cell is another external world modeler whose models have allowed it to predict and outwit the vicissitudes of ecosystems that have altered beyond belief over the last 3.5 billion years. The multicellular organism is a future-modeler that's proven its stuff and has improved its external world modelling capabilties for roughly 1.2 billion years. there's a lot of history condensed within us in a form that enables us to model the future and survive whatever cream pies or acid splashes it tosses into our face. by the time we rise all the way to the brain, the number of models within models within models is uncountable. > John Skoyles 12/03/01 wrties: Before we link aspects of mind > such as 'self' to biological and cultural components, we must > be more reductive > - at least from a brain point of view. Put yourself in the > shoes of the brain. Its problem is discovering what it is yoked to > > Hb: so even the brain is an exile in the body. How could > that be? Brains presumably evolved from gaglions cells > generated as coordinators, as in the long line of individual > micorpocesssing center at each pair of legs along a lobster's > neural spine. The brain is rather different from these > distributed processing offices in that most of its wiring > goes from one brain cell to another and has no direct contact > with the sensors that pump us what we think of as "the > outside world." Another way of saying this is that what we > think of as the outside world is a construction modeled > somehow in neuronal groupings and their interchanges. But > the brain puts a premium on internal communication, isolating > it more than sub-brains like the enteric gut-brain. Is this > what we're talking about when we say the brain has to try out > various hypotheses to comprehend the body it resides in? > JS Howard, good analogy - the brain is an exile. There are computers in Australia that operate the air conditioning of buildings in Shanghai - they sense transcontentially the temp and humidity of their rooms and transcontentially activator the motors and pumps of the air conditioning plant. The brain may be physically in the body but informationally that is unimportant (like the whether the computers controlling airconditioning in China are the same buidling or Australia). What matters if having the input to control output to desired ends via a model. And you are right about sub-brains. What do the neurons in the motor cortex know of the body - their sensory-motor loop extension into the world is really that of motor neurons in the spine. Likewise the cerebrellum and basal ganglia. Their extention loop is via other neurons in the brain. Wheels within wheels or rather maps within maps. > Js: and so can shape behaviourally. The body is an obvious > one - the brain does not wake up each day with a different one > > Hb: actually a considerable number of cells the brain wakes > up with each day are newcomers to the body, born overnight > and allowed to grow into their space. Aging also changes the > body, but quite a bit more slowly. JS So true. We shrink a little during the day upon gravity and expand back during the night. But the body remains much the same - it is not as if John Skoyles awoke with the body of Howard Bloom or Howard Bloom that of John Skoyles. I think both our brains would have shock if that happened! > Js: - but if we think about it not the body is not its only > yoked continuity. Reputation - the perceptions of others also > create a continuity it has to happen [Bloom's PR theory of > the brain's embodiment]. Virtual reality shows that the brain > can experience continuities that exist purely in a computer > algorithm. Flocks, shoals, jazz jams and team games that the > brain is yoked to a place or role in a larger continutity. > > Hb: good point. My kid spends hours on a computer playing > games. The pixels, software, mouse, keyboard and monitor > become extensions of his self. They are new realities his > brain must model, then incrorporate. Our tools rapidly become > extensions of us. When we use a hammer enough to get used to > it, we feel where its heft and head are as surely as we feel > another extension, our arm and hand. When we get used to a > keyboard, it becomes an extension of our self. Put us at a > keyboard whose feel is different and we struggle to get the > brain to adjust to this new and uncomfortable extension, to > get used to it until we make it a part of us. > JS Absolutely. My hands are speaking these words as they hit the keyboard. hb: and mine, as I've mentioned before, frequently type words I did not intend--and spell those words correctly. which indicates that the motor brain working my fingers does not always listen carefully to my verbal brain. it also indicates that my motor brain has more than independence, it has its own vocabulary. Howard
Floys are not entirely relevant, but they're fun. Slow the demonstration down about two pecks to get the effect I sent them for. And what, pray tell, is that effect? Humans and innumerable other animals, from bacteria on up, operate as if they were recruits in a massive search party--a drag net. State troopers looking for a kid lost in the woods fan out across the landscape, but stay within hailing distance of one another. Imagine that you and have jjoined a search party of ten people spreading out to find a little girl named Goldilocks who we suspect disappeared in a dense, dark woods with lots of bushes and the occasional little-girl-and-porridge-eating bear. On our own, each of us could cover a swath of territory about five feet to our right and five feet to our left. The gang decides that we'll all walk ten-feet apart, but we'll shout if we run across something promising. You're on the far left, and I'm on the far-right. If my perpetually shoddy arithmetic is right, that puts us 90 feet apart. For all practical purposes, I've now got you and eight others contributing to what I can cover. I can only see a bit further than my arms can reach. But you provide and the others provide me with 18 extra eyes and spread my senses out enormously. When I run into tough sledding with an editor and need to talk to someone and you give me a sympathetic ear, we both become parts of a drag net. Our emotional search party includes lots of the folks I know and from whom I've derived experience and lots of the folks you know who've been expanding your input on things. To get from my emotional center, my limbic system, to my conscious brain, presumably in the left frontal or prefrontal cortex, my spew of emotional confusion has made a rather peculiar detour. Instead of moving the three or four inches from one brain center to another, my tales of woe have traveled 2,000 miles down to Tennessee and back. They've forced me to lace myself into a social search party of very hefty size. When you get off the phone with me, you might just talk to a friend in San Diego and tell him the strange story of my writing snafus (disguising things a bit to protect my privacy, of course). He may take the tale into account when giving advice to a buddy based in England who's having similar problems. Meaning my difficulty will make it half way round the world and---and that the advice you gave me probably benefitted from tales passed this way half way around the world as well. Floys are computerized
carniverous birds that operate on the dragnet principle. If you're a
floy flying shotgun on the far left and you spot food (food is the red
thing that bumbles across the screen when you push the "stranger"
button), you dive for it. The other floys have orders to stay as close
as possible to the group's center of social gravity, but to leave each
other a bit of wingroom. So when you veer off to attack the food, all
the other birds are pulled in your direction, including the birds furthest
from you, birds that were much too far away to spot the food on their
own. As one or two of the birds next to you is dragged closer to the
food by the need to stick with you, they spot the food and dive for
it too. It doesn't take long before even the birds furthest from you
have followed their neighbors and been dragged to the food, too. Howard In real life we're often hit by a powerful emotion, disturbed or elated by it, and run off to others to discuss it, get reassurance about it, and find out how to interpret it. So strong emotions which roil us often send us running to others. Which means that emotions of this sort call us to use the social system as an extra-cranial extension of mind. The limbic/visceral emotions hit us with various forms of uncertainty or needs to share and to get the equivalent of the hugs an agitated chimp seeks out. We take the feedback we get and use it to formulate an explanation for our emotion in the verbal brain. Which means that in many cases the limbic system uses conversations with friends to feed its signals back into the left brain interpreter--our logical, verbal self. This is reminiscent of Kurt Goldstein's patient Scheider, who had taken a bullet to the back of the head, suffered damage to parietal lobes apparently responsible for passing information from the right to the left brain, and whose non-conscious mind compensated by setting up an elaborate hand signalling system of which Schneider himself was virtually unaware. Goldstein discovered this outer path from one brain area to another by tying Schneider's hands to his sides. When his hands were free, Schneider could read a document out loud. With his hands tied, he couldn't. The material his right brain was reading couldn't make it to the left brain where it would have been turned into spoken words. Again, Schneider was totally unaware of the hand signals worked out by parts of his brain which hadn't bother announcing their innovations to his consciousness. The number of outside loops one part of the brain uses to communicate with another is amazing. And it's equally amazing how these extracranial trunk lines of the mind plug us into the larger information processing apparatus of the group. Howard _______________________________ Scientists discover 'second
brain' in the stomach Now this is very peculiar. Very peculiar indeed. The talking self in the left cerebral cortex may be mere inches from the "seat of feeling"--the place (or upper traces of a far-flung hurricane) where the basic emotions are doing their thing. Why can't our thinking self see what's happening right under its nose--or mere millimeters from its dendritic threads? The answer may lie in the evolution of emotion and the self--or so the theory of the extrasomatory extensions of the self says. We evolved not just as individuals, but as members of groups whose competition was often a matter of life and death. Those of us who acted as productive plug-ins to a group's machinery were likely to survive--and to produce lots of offspring. Rugged individualists who refused to become components in a group's IQ would have had it rough when pitted against a horde of the well-organized. Some of them would have literally been eaten (given the recent evidence on early hominid cannibalism). At the very least, they would have lost their wives. No mating, no procreating. So the line of loners would have soon ceased to be. In ants, a worker's nervous system is wired as a strand in a hive-wide circuitry. The need to connect shows up in the worker's equivalents of gregariousness and uncertainty. She wanders a small distance from the pack, then grows uneasy and feels the need to hurry back. Once she's gotten reassurance from her "friends" she wanders off and explores a bit of far flung territory again. Each time she does a bit of sightseeing she spreads the group's search web--the net of eyes and antennae the hive sends out to hunt for food. Each time the wandering worker returns for the hymenopteran equivalent of tea and sympathy she inadvertently brings back a report on a bit of previously uncharted territory. (see Deborah Gordon's book, and her article in \text\ants) We humans seem to be rigged in similar ways--our psyche drives us to be neurons of a collective brain. To the group it's often less important that we understand our innards than that our innards drive us to synapse with others, and to make our contribution to the data pool of society. So when we encounter something that troubles or uplifts us, we are driven both to introspection and to the comfort we can find in sharing our fears, our furies, and our joys with the company of friends. To them we give reports on the strange territories we've explored--realms which range from romance to finance, from madness to meaning, from pathos to punch lines, and a good deal in between. In return our friends give us the words and concepts with which to interpret our moods. Every time we're driven back to others for a "reality check," we're tuned to interpret our experience using the acceptable forms of expression of the moment. We're plugged into our group's zeitgeist. And every time we return to babble our half-digested angsts or triumphs, we expand, even if by only the slightest bit, the ambit of the group's understanding of its circumstance--its view of its internal and external realities. Self didn't, in all probability evolve as just a way of navigating the private paths of solitary life. It seems to be a social billboard and a social interface. Ted Coons, one of our group members, pictures it as a model human inside of us standing in an arena where his or her every actions are observed by an audience of significant others, the inner representations of our friends and family. The self is also judged by an observer of even greater importance, ourselves, our basic "me." With this model human, this puppet "us" homunculus, we try out the various ways in which we should dress in the morning, the speeches we could use to present an idea, a feeling, a demand, or a request. We see how the model audience would react to each form of presentation, and most of all how we'd respond to it. If it seems witty, delicious, or appropriate to circumstance it's sent out for implementation by the body and the tongue. If it seems obnoxious it simply disappears. Which means the self may not have evolved as a bridge to our interior. It probably evolved as a causeway to the folks with whom we live. A pathway which connects us even to those with whom we interact but whom we'll never see--the bosses far above our head, the farmers who produce our food, the construction crews who built our home and the carpenters who built our bed. These ruminations spring from a bit of reading in George Stephanopoulos' "All Too Human: A Political Education." I've reached that part of the book in which Stephanopoulos gets the job of key political adviser to Bill Clinton. Clinton, at this point, is governor of Arkansas and one of many candidates about to run the gauntlet of the primary elections for president. Bill walks through his bedroom and his hallways, taking off his pants, changing into others, picking up papers from his night table, constantly spurting ideas, and looking insistently for new solutions and new ways to bathe in the feedback of those around him. Stephanopoulos follows him through his soliloquies in mid-pants-change and the moment a bit later when Hilary enters the room and both Bill and Hil are dialoging at full speed, bouncing Bills concepts and Hilary's analyses off of Stephanopoulos, looking for his feedback. But Stephanopoulos is not Bill and Hilary's only extracranial extension of the self. Bill frequently asks, "What ideas do our friends in New York have on this? Are there any new ways of handling this coming in from that group in California we've been talking to? What do the polls say ithe public mood thinks about this issue right now?" From the mix of incoming signals, Bill Clinton arrives at a conclusion which he can say with full conviction is his. In fact, his self-confidence and the passion with which he conveys his beliefs, says Stephanopoulos, puts him head and shoulders above any other candidates whom this well-placed political operative has ever met. Equally important, Clinton absorbs each audience to which he speaks and adjusts the way he puts things to make his stump speech intimately personal. He is compelling because he believes in what he says but says it in a way that shows how quickly he's plugged into his audience. So the number of contributors to Clinton's "self" is immense. Stephanopoulos is just one of many advisors. He and those like him are considered staff--and that staff is large. Then there are the old and trusted friends, the ones with whom the bonds go back in time. These are the FOB, the Friends of Bill. Clinton grills these people constantly, not only for their opinions, but for input they've gleaned from sources spread in nearly every state. If a key FOB like Webster Hubble nixes an idea then it's understood the idea is kaput. This form of reliance on others is occasionally derided as an overdependence on polls. And it can clearly get that way when the candidate is a pale puppet who parrots the popular thoughts of the day. But in a representative government, the self of a candidate is SUPPOSED to represent that of the populace he is elected to serve. In that sense, there is a justification to Louis XIV's pronouncement that "L'etat cest moi." "The state is me." Or, to put it in democratic terms, "I, the candidate, am my constituency." Who in this case, is an extrasomatory extension of whom? Bill Clinton is a walking summation of those around him--much more so than the average man in the street who doesn't have the team of social input purveyors available to a politician. He is an extrasomatory extension of the public personality. Those from whom he sucks opinions are, in turn, extrasomatory extensions of him--vital feelers feeding his identity. What, under these circumstances, gives a public figure the appearance of having a strong sense of self--the kind of thing McCain had in spades? Is it sheer self-confidence, despite the contributions from others of which the self is made? Is charisma a matter of postural and facial cues--those of an alpha leader, a silverback--an upright walk and masterful talk? Is it then the flimsiest of masks, but one of great persuasive strength? Where do others stop and we begin? Why is the self so calmed by the others and so often jolted by the incoherent feelings from within? Howard _______________________________ sThese "supernormal" skills were Marco-van-Basten-style insta-maneuvers based on huge amounts of study. I'd spent years taking rock careers apart, applying correlational studies to extract the secrets of success, learning to predict four months in advance what albums would be on top of the charts, then finding out why the albums showed the patterns of sales I'd absorbed, and finally befriending booking agents, taking those with the most eager minds out to dinner so we could analyze the strategic errors of rockers who were almost-making-it-but-not-quite and so we could reverse engineer the tricks that had taken other artists to greatness. On top of that, I learned lessons on touring strategy from managers who were wizards at it. By the time Joan walked into my office, I was ripe, trained, practiced, and pre-rehearsed for an instant vision. As for the alleged mind reading--I'd been studying my own emotions and those of others since the age of thirteen, had begun to take courses in psychology at sixteen, had learned a lot of practical lessons in human nuance from the seven therapists who'd tried to help me out, had turned down four fellowships in clinical psych, had spent my hitchhiking-and-riding-the-rails years learning to extract the life story from every driver who picked me up and every hobo I met, then had honed the skill of life-story grabbing and of applying empathy to fill in the blanks during years as a journalist. When I sat down with Kenny Loggins at his home in Santa Barbara and told him he was terrified of a woman and wanted to rocket away from her at 200 miles an hour, preferably in a Lamborghini, he was startled as hell and blurted, "Who told you about the problems I'm having with my wife." But it wasn't telepathy. It came from applying a great deal of training--including empathetic calisthenics--to his body of work. It came from a month of studying his lyrics, being utterly baffled by them, returning to them over and over again, then finally rearranging the stanzas like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Feeling out the things that Maurice White, founder of Earth, Wind, & Fire, never told his managers was a matter of reading the meaning of the graphics on his album covers. Getting what Styx' vocalist and songwriter Dennis de Young was really trying to say in his albums also involved a month of puzzling out the lyrics and the album graphics...then interviewing him for three days straight. By the way, I was not able to read Prince's mind in a vacuum. His managers would usually send (in great secrecy) a sheet of his upcoming lyrics, or let me visit the set where Purple Rain was being made (a trip on which I never got to talk to Prince--but the details were all there to read), or even to see a semi-finished video of Under The Cherry Moon before I'd give them the Swami act. I'm posting this to paleopsych because our ability to tune ourselves to the frequencies of others has a lot of scientific meanings. It's an example of the way we integrate socially. It's the equivalent of the electrons I was talking about last night--electrons that probably participate in a wave by simply ooching back and forth a tiny bit and passing their movement on to the unstable electrons circling atoms adjacent to them. We do that as humans. Watching news reports last night on the violence in Israel and Macedonia it became obvious that we humans easily pass anger to one another--the sort of righteous anger over martyred fellow-members of our group that leads to mass violence and a breakdown of society. We do it in ways that
very much mirror the passage of a sea wave's motion from one gently
rolling molecule to the next one down the line. We can easily ignite
with a shared rage because we have common instincts, common brains,
common genes, common emotional capacities, and we resonate easily to
our neighbors' frequencies. Music synchronizes us. So do rituals, propaganda,
and news reports. A deep empathic core causes us to congeal, to come
together in large scale social enterprises as automatically as termites
do when building a mound of enormous size and complexity. When you tap
that core consciously, what you achieve can look like outright telepathy.
These rulers of what's socially acceptable in science and what's not may have been intelliigent men, but when they ceased acting on curiosity and began drawing up social "Thou shalt nots" they were idiots. They acted as makers of group cohesion, as social wave surfers and social wave directors, but they also acted as mass-mind lobotomizers. They put one of the great mysteries of the human mind off limits. They did it by orchestrating the cues that coordinate us as parts of a coherent wave--rejection cues. For nearly 150 years we've dreaded the mockery of others, mockery that would surely greet us if we probed the reason hypnotism works. Hypnotism offers important evidence for a theory I've been forcing down the throat of this group for some time now--The Extrasomatory Extensions of Self concept. I've put a summary below for those who aren't tired of reading the darned thing. What did Ted do when he hynotized Fons de Poel? He inserted himself into Fons' brain. Not into Fons' consciousness, but into some hidden self that wants so badly to please that it practically ingests another human whole, it takes that person's directives and plants them so deeply that: a) we can't see them; and b:) we have to act on them. They are as much "us" as our consciousness--perhaps even more "us." Why? Because these introjections of another person, these commands planted in us by the hypnotizer, have a power few of us can resist. They battle our self-conscious will...and they win. The others in us are more powerful than the thing we think of as "me." Entire animal species seldom hold on to a trait, pack it into the expensive memory storage device we call a gene,then pass it on to their daughters and sons if it has not proven its adaptive value. Most human are hypnotizable. Why? What does the self-beneath-the-floor-of-self do in normal life? Want a wild guess? It entrains us to others. It stores the thou shalts and thou shalt nots of our neighbors, our family, our friends, those whom we would like to rise high enough to know in the future, and of our culture. And it does more than just store, it warps and drives our will in ways we do not know. The others inside of us are more powerful than the thing we think of as "me." It would be extremely interesting to know where this dictator programmed by others--this kernel of hypnotizability--resides in the brain. My guess is the limbic system. If that's true, then this tyrranical module of social integration and social conformity probably goes back at least 250 million years ago, to the days of our reptilian ancestors, the ancestors who evolved much of our current limbic system and handed it down to us. Past postings by John Skoyles indicate that the what John calls the mirror neurons of the motor area may also be involved. Here's a snippet of an old paleopsych conversation between John and myself: "you know far more about motor neurons than most of us. However what it seems to come down to is that motor neurons link us like molecules of water swaying together in a quiet swatch of shallow sea. And in many ways we do seem linked this way. Hundreds of millions of us speak a common language, convey meanings with the same vocabulary of postures, gesticulations, and facial expressions, share many a common attitude, and are moved one way or the other by the public mood. Which raises once again the mystery of why we need to create an illusion of differentiation, a sense of self and separateness. " Does anyone out there have an idea of how this social despot in the brain evolved? Neil Greenberg and Gordon Burhardt, have you seen signs of it in lizards? Jim Grau, you've written about "Learning Without A Brain." Could some of these introjections of others, these highly suggestible, rapid learning centers, be located outside the cranium? Howard ------- summary of the extrasomatory extensions of self concept: The basic idea runs something like this. When we get wonked, bonked, roiled, and boiled by powerful feelings--whether they are delightful or nightmarish--a strange thing happens. We often don't know what to make of them. Our logical mind has a hard time seeing into the swirl of our visceral passions and making sense of them. When we probe the whirl within us we can posit numerous possibilities. But this guessing is often the best that we can do. What's more, our internal monsoons often pelt us with unbearable gales of emotionality. So how do we solve our confusion? We look for someone else to talk to. We babble out our situation to a friend, a relative, a mentor, a bartender, or a shrink and beg him or her to tell us what s/he makes of it. Then, through the words of someone outside our self what's going on inside of us gains a little clarity. Now this is very peculiar. Very peculiar indeed. The talking self in the left cerebral cortex may be mere inches from the "seat of feeling"--the place (or upper traces of a far-flung hurricane) where the basic emotions are doing their thing. Why can't our thinking self see what's happening right under its nose--or mere millimeters from its dendritic threads? The answer may lie in the evolution of emotion and the self--or so the theory of the extrasomatory extensions of the self says. We evolved not just as individuals, but as members of groups whose competition was often a matter of life and death. Those of us who acted as productive plug-ins to a group's machinery were likely to survive--and to produce lots of offspring. Rugged individualists who refused to become components in a group's IQ would have had it rough when pitted against a horde of the well-organized. Some of them would have literally been eaten (given the recent evidence on early hominid cannibalism). At the very least, they would have lost their wives. No mating, no procreating. So the line of loners would have soon ceased to be. In ants, a worker's nervous system is wired as a strand in a hive-wide circuitry. The need to connect shows up in the worker's equivalents of gregariousness and uncertainty. She wanders a small distance from the pack, then grows uneasy and feels the need to hurry back. Once she's gotten reassurance from her "friends" she wanders off and explores a bit of far flung territory again. Each time she does a bit of sightseeing she spreads the group's search web--the net of eyes and antennae the hive sends out to hunt for food. Each time the wandering worker returns for the hymenopteran equivalent of tea and sympathy she inadvertently brings back a report on a bit of previously uncharted territory. (see Deborah Gordon's book, and her article in \text\ants) We humans seem to be rigged in similar ways--our psyche drives us to be neurons of a collective brain. To the group it's often less important that we understand our innards than that our innards drive us to synapse with others, and to make our contribution to the data pool of society. So when we encounter something that troubles or uplifts us, we are driven both to introspection and to the comfort we can find in sharing our fears, our furies, and our joys with the company of friends. To them we give reports on the strange territories we've explored--realms which range from romance to finance, from madness to meaning, from pathos to punch lines, and a good deal in between. In return our friends give us the words and concepts with which to interpret our moods. Every time we're driven back to others for a "reality check," we're tuned to interpret our experience using the acceptable forms of expression of the moment. We're plugged into our group's zeitgeist. And every time we return to babble our half-digested angsts or triumphs, we expand, even if by only the slightest bit, the ambit of the group's understanding of its circumstance--its view of its internal and external realities. Self didn't, in all probability evolve as just a way of navigating the private paths of solitary life. It seems to be a social billboard and a social interface. Ted Coons, one of our group members, pictures it as a model human inside of us standing in an arena where his or her every actions are observed by an audience of significant others, the inner representations of our friends and family. The self is also judged by an observer of even greater importance, ourselves, our basic "me." With this model human, this puppet "us" homunculus, we try out the various ways in which we should dress in the morning, the speeches we could use to present an idea, a feeling, a demand, or a request. We see how the model audience would react to each form of presentation, and most of all how we'd respond to it. If it seems witty, delicious, or appropriate to circumstance it's sent out for implementation by the body and the tongue. If it seems obnoxious it simply disappears. Which means the self may not have evolved as a bridge to our interior. It probably evolved as a causeway to the folks with whom we live. A pathway which connects us even to those with whom we interact but whom we'll never see--the bosses far above our head, the farmers who produce our food, the construction crews who built our home and the carpenters who built our bed. These ruminations spring from a bit of reading in George Stephanopoulos' "All Too Human: A Political Education." I've reached that part of the book in which Stephanopoulos gets the job of key political adviser to Bill Clinton. Clinton, at this point, is governor of Arkansas and one of many candidates about to run the gauntlet of the primary elections for president. Bill walks through his bedroom and his hallways, taking off his pants, changing into others, picking up papers from his night table, constantly spurting ideas, and looking insistently for new solutions and new ways to bathe in the feedback of those around him. Stephanopoulos follows him through his soliloquies in mid-pants-change and the moment a bit later when Hilary enters the room and both Bill and Hil are dialoging at full speed, bouncing Bills concepts and Hilary's analyses off of Stephanopoulos, looking for his feedback. But Stephanopoulos is not Bill and Hilary's only extracranial extension of the self. Bill frequently asks, "What ideas do our friends in New York have on this? Are there any new ways of handling this coming in from that group in California we've been talking to? What do the polls say ithe public mood thinks about this issue right now?" From the mix of incoming signals, Bill Clinton arrives at a conclusion which he can say with full conviction is his. In fact, his self-confidence and the passion with which he conveys his beliefs, says Stephanopoulos, puts him head and shoulders above any other candidates whom this well-placed political operative has ever met. Equally important, Clinton absorbs each audience to which he speaks and adjusts the way he puts things to make his stump speech intimately personal. He is compelling because he believes in what he says but says it in a way that shows how quickly he's plugged into his audience. So the number of contributors to Clinton's "self" is immense. Stephanopoulos is just one of many advisors. He and those like him are considered staff--and that staff is large. Then there are the old and trusted friends, the ones with whom the bonds go back in time. These are the FOB, the Friends of Bill. Clinton grills these people constantly, not only for their opinions, but for input they've gleaned from sources spread in nearly every state. If a key FOB like Webster Hubble nixes an idea then it's understood the idea is kaput. This form of reliance on others is occasionally derided as an overdependence on polls. And it can clearly get that way when the candidate is a pale puppet who parrots the popular thoughts of the day. But in a representative government, the self of a candidate is SUPPOSED to represent that of the populace he is elected to serve. In that sense, there is a justification to Louis XIV's pronouncement that "L'etat cest moi." "The state is me." Or, to put it in democratic terms, "I, the candidate, am my constituency." Who in this case, is an extrasomatory extension of whom? Bill Clinton is a walking summation of those around him--much more so than the average man in the street who doesn't have the team of social input purveyors available to a politician. Clinton is an extrasomatory extension of the public personality. Those from whom he sucks opinions are, in turn, extrasomatory extensions of him--vital feelers feeding his identity. What, under these circumstances, gives a public figure the appearance of having a strong sense of self--the kind of thing McCain had in spades? Is it sheer self-confidence, despite the contributions from others of which the self is made? Is charisma a matter of postural and facial cues--those of an alpha leader, a silverback--an upright walk and masterful talk? Is it then the flimsiest of masks, but one of great persuasive strength? Where do others stop and we begin? Why is the self so calmed by the others and so often jolted by the incoherent feelings from within? when we become anxious, upset, or excited we have to go to others to figure out what our excitement is about. the emotional brain is trying to communicate something to the verbal brain, but instead of taking the short route and traveling through three inches of brain tissue, it takes the long route and loops out through another human. Why? Because we've evolved to be interacting parts of a search web, a collective intelligence. Agita is the cue that tells us to spill our guts to a friend--to share our disturbance with others who, if what we have to say is sufficiently interesting, will pass its lessons or its warnings on to others. In fact, whenever we talk of our self, we are talking of other people. The self is our social interface. Connecting us to other humans is its job. Turbulent emotion tends to be something that confuses us a great deal. We are not sure how to interpret it, as the experiments of Schachter, and Singer (Cognitive, social and physiological determinants of emotional state. Psychological review, 1962, 69, 379-99) indicated. In this classic study, Schachter and Singer injected their subjects with adrenaline. Up went heart rates and alertness, sweaty palms, and other indications that the adrenaline was doing its thing. But it took social input for the subjects to interpret what they were feeling. If a shill in the group got angry and stomped out of the room, many of the others excited by adrenaline took his cue and interpreted their chemically-caused arousal as anger. If there was no shill throwing a tantrum, the sujects stayed calm. How confused they might have been by their symptoms wasn't reported. In real life we're often hit by a powerful emotion, disturbed or elated by it, and run off to others to discuss it, get reassurance about it, and find out how to interpret it. So strong emotions which roil us often send us running to others. Which means that emotions of this sort call us to use the social system as an extra-cranial extension of mind. The limbic/visceral emotions hit us with various forms of uncertainty or needs to share and to get the equivalent of the hugs an agitated chimp seeks out. We take the feedback we get and use it to formulate an explanation for our emotion in the verbal brain. Which means that in many cases the limbic system uses conversations with friends to feed its signals back into the left brain interpreter--our logical, verbal self. This is reminiscent of Kurt Goldstein's patient Scheider, who had taken a bullet to the back of the head, suffered damage to parietal lobes apparently responsible for passing information from the right to the left brain, and whose non-conscious mind compensated by setting up an elaborate hand signalling system of which Schneider himself was virtually unaware. Goldstein discovered this outer path from one brain area to another by tying Schneider's hands to his sides. When his hands were free, Schneider could read a document out loud. With his hands tied, he couldn't. The material his right brain was reading couldn't make it to the left brain where it would have been turned into spoken words. Again, Schneider was totally unaware of the hand signals worked out by parts of his brain which hadn't bother announcing their innovations to his consciousness. The number of outside loops one part of the brain uses to communicate with another is amazing. And it's equally amazing how these extracranial trunk lines of the mind plug us into the larger information processing apparatus of the group. howard
Ted Coons, who runs the program, and I discussed this briefly a few days ago. Nothing enters the mind without passing through the limbic system first. Down there it's judged for its positive or negative emotional implications. If it has no emotional significance, it simply doesn't make it into the process we call mind. And once a perception IS in mind, where it goes and how it's combined with what's there or reshaped is dictated far more by emotion than by "reason." In fact, what is "reason"? How does it differ neurobiologically from other forms of brain activity? Is it less connected to motor centers or sensory processors than other systems? Why and how did it evolve? What's its evolutionary history and its adaptive value? My suspicion is that it acts as a large scale social integrator. One group can synapse with another via the abstract, "rational" rules of fairness and justice. One group can clip itself to another using rational "moral" rules of this sort. The more groups clip themselves together, the larger, more powerful, more creative, and more potentially rich the society becomes. The larger the group, the more new emergent properties blossom and burgeon in its midst. Large groups manage to reinvent life with techno-ubiquities like language, metal, printing, and electricity. These techno foundations reinvent society and alter human nature as dramatically as the growth of new limbs and extra brains. They change our phenotype while totally bypassing genes. Reason is pretty darned helpless when it comes to understanding the rest of the brainstuff a few inches beneath or behind it. It has a very hard time getting a handle on the emotions, intuitions, instincts, and the other gods and monsters below the floorboards of consciousness. But reason is in touch with something at least as vast---the social fabric. And it contributes to and interfaces with that fabric on a very big scale indeed. The trick for folks like us is to turn this outward-facing but ignorant (and arrogant) thing, our reason, around and get it to understand the innards it sits next to--the emotional and involuntary us. And the irony is this: when reason turns around and tries to grok its neighbors in the brain…its passionate and wordlessly persuasive neighbors…what does it find? The introjection of others. Reason turns away from the crowd to reflect on the depths of self and finds that the self is a collection of knotted power centers in which the crowd is captured...and in which thecrowd rules our actions and shapes our thoughts. Is reason humbled? It should be. Is reason able to see the forces of brain it can't control as a challenge and a chance for enrichment? Is it able to bring the unseen forces within the brain to the surface, to let them roar with passion, and to use them for good? It is if you and I work to make it so. Bringing fire from the peak of Olympus to mankind may turn out to be a process of turning around and facing the selves beneath self-the selves that until now have successfully hidden themselves from the limited, ignorant, but willing-to-learn thing we call mind. Howard _______________________________ _______________________________ A final question. If a tree falls in the cyberforest and goes unheard, does it cease to be a tree? If a self grows dependent on cyber extensions and its cyberlinks go dead, does that self cease to have an identity? hb _______________________________ In a message dated 12/19/00 3:30:59 PM Eastern Standard Time, russ writes: Your note about ghosts got me thinking about how people seldom like to be truly alone. It made me wonder about people who always have a TV (or radio) on as "background" and about how most of us talk to ourselves. My dad *always* has to have a TV on, even when he's doing his most demanding mental work (he's a university professor). He doesn't really pay attention to it--I think he just likes the "presence" it provides. Similarly, my grandmother couldn't go to sleep unless she was listening to talk radio. hb: I suspect this comes from a need to feel we're rubbing shoulders with our fellow human beings. Overdoses of isolation can literally be fatal--they can kill off cells in the hippocampus, cripple the immune system, sabotage our ability to put two and two together, and a great many more equally lethal ceteras. Feeling that we're part of a warm and cozy crowd, on the other hand, does wonders for our minds and bodies, not to mention for our moods. If the crowd won't come into your bedroom or study and give you a back rub while you work or while you try to sleep, then why not get the next best thing--an electronic box that puts out the sounds, shapes, and other supercues normally flashed by aggregations of humanity? I was about to say that this doesn't really have much to do with the extrasomatory extensions of self theory, then it hit me. We need other humans just to remain healthy and alive. What could prove that we rely on those around us to provide the missing pieces of our selves more than that? rk: I'm constantly talking to myself, hb: this one's a classic. by talking to our selves not only do we provide our selves with company, but we seem to open up an extra processing and memory channel. I know that when I'm involved in something ultra-complex--like hooking up a gizmo that involves keeping track of what seem like six dozen separate wires at once, or doing some computer niggling that demands testing a hundred permatations and combinations and knowing where I stand with each, talking to myself makes it far easier to keep the whole kit and kaboodle of data dancing in short-term memory. This is a form of what Karl Sagan used to call "extracranial memory." But it shares something important with the extrasomatory extensions of the self. It's one batch of brain parts taking a detour outside the head to get to another batch of brain parts. You'd think they'd take the short route and simply hop the two or three inches between them across the synaptic gaps. But, no, the brain seems to get a kick out of transmitting messages to itself via channels far outside the skull. rk: and I can't count the number of people who will admit to doing the same thing, even though they're usually embarrassed about it. So I wonder if these aren't ways of trying to artificially invoke the feeling that others are around, that we're interacting with or in the presence of at least one other person. hb: Here's a take on this from The Lucifer Principle: "Our need for each other is not only built into the foundation of our biological structure, it is also the cornerstone of our psyche. Humans are so uncontrollably social that when we're wandering around at home where no one can see us, we talk to ourselves. When we smash our thumb with a hammer we curse to no one in particular. In a universe whose heavens seem devoid of living matter, we address ourselves skyward to gods, angels and the occasional extra-terrestrial." Also, this morning I woke up thinking about the famous "Stockholm syndrome" in which hostages sympathize with their captors. It seems like this fits in to your theory, but I'm not sure exactly how. hb: it seems to me like it fits, too, and I'm not sure why. When the North Koreans were perfecting the art of brainwashing, they discovered that the secret was to take American POWs out of their peer group, put them in extreme isolation, then give them one and only one form of companionship--the presence of the team of alternatively friendly and menacing Korean interrogator/torturers responsible for their "reeducation." Because we rely on others so heavily for daily reinforcement of our sense of reality, the reality in the heads of many of the captives shifted until it matched the worldview of their jailers. The Koreans were trying to alter the stuff inside the skull by tinkering with the extrasomatory extensions we need to communicate between our emotions, our perceptions, and our verbal self. Roughly the same thing happens in the Stockholm Syndrome. There are common elements in the case of Korean brainwashing and the experience of being a hostage. A while back, Val Geist and I were dialoging heavily about the manner in which circumstance can actually have an impact on the biological underpinnings of our psche. In fact, we didn't limit ourselves to the human sense of self, we were talking about the biopsychology of beasts from bacteria to bovines and from waterfleas to wolves. Val has shown that in large mammals there are two alternative settings a body can assume. One is the maintenance mode, the other the dispersal mode. Creatures who've found a niche that's rich in food and shelter will hunker down and stay a while. They'll not only stick around, but their bodies will adapt to make them efficient feeders but inefficient long-distance travelers. For example, among bacteria, those in maintenance mode will develop stalks that root them to the spot and, in all probability, a body type which maximizes their ability to gobble things up. But when food runs out in the old homestead, a dramatic change takes place. Bacteria abandon the old body plan, forget the stalk, and instead develop outboard propellors (flagella) which allow them to skoot off across the landscape looking for real estate where fresh food is ripe for the taking. The body-form equipped for scouting and exploration is the dispersal mode. I took this a step further and said that among humans, there are five different variations on the maintenance/dispersal scheme--fleeing, fasting, feasting, questing, and conquering. Fleeing is the phenotype relevant to the Stockholm Syndrome. A group that has run low on food or is being threatened by more successful gangs will stick together as long as it has a sense that its leaders and its group-structure still have a chance to overcome adversity. Sure, the members will go into a sort-of crouch. They'll frown on anything that can use up the meager resources still at hand. If they're humans, they'll grow anti-sexual, will put the sort of kibbosh on stuffing your face that the Christians of the middle ages and early renaissance did (gluttony in Dante's day was considered the deadliest of the seven deadly sins) and will grow highly intolerant of another resource drainer--disagreement. Groups under threat tend to come down hard on anyone who dares to be unconventional or, even worse, rebellious. This is the fasting phase--a variation on Val Geist's maintenance mode. But things get very strange when the group loses its sense that loyalty to the old ways and to the leaders of the day can pull it out of the muck. Once that feeling of potential control goes, the members of the group shift dramatically and go into a dispersal mode. It's called the fleeing phase. Folks abandon the social group and strike out on their own, travelling at top speed. In human terms, they give up on the old home territory and its way of life and become refugees. Low resources WITH a sense of potential control and you get a maintenance mode. Low resources and NO sense of potential control and you get a dispersal mode. Here's where the connection to the Stockholm Syndrome comes in. Refugees abandon their old position in the middle tiers of their old social group and head for a new group in which they will be on the very bottom. As the lowest on the totem pole, they'll be required to reorient themselves to fit the lifestyle of those above them. They'll have to change group loyalties, their world view, their name, their language, and even the ways in which they perceive things. Folks who've been scattered by adversity are low in self-esteem, low in mood (they tend to be depressed), low in health, and very ready to cling to new and more promising ways. They are ripe to heed the cues which come from their hierarchical "superiors." Kidnappers and hostage takers take advantage of all these factors. They tend to isolate their
victims. Patti Hearst, for example, was kept alone in a closet by her
Symbionese Liberation Army captors. Hostage takers make those they've
snagged very aware of their lack of control and of the inability of
the old social system to save them. And they spoonfeed their own view
of things to those they've nabbed. In other words, they use the cues
that trigger the fleeing mode. In addition, they clearly rank way over
the heads of their prisoners in the hierarchy of power. So they can
use the cues of dominance and the instincts of submission to turn the
heads of their victims considerably. How exactly this pertains to the
extrasomatory extensions of self I'm not quite sure. The Stockholm Syndrome
definitely takes advantage of the ability of those outside of us to
"mess with our heads." The fact that we rely on others for
so much of what we think of as our individuality and our private psyche
is one of the things that makes this mental scrambling so possible.
rk: Perhaps the need to identify with a superorganism is so great that
we'll even identify with those people who are holding us against our
will. hb: well put. rk: When someone is taken hostage, he's violently
cut off from whatever superorganisms he had been a part of. Realizing
this at some level, he quickly shifts allegiances to the only available
superorganism, the one which also currently holds life and death power
over him. hb: very economically expressed, not to mention perceptive.
Howard ----------- At 10:04 PM 12/18/00 -0500, you wrote: A quick thought
after speaking with a friend about the ghosts of old friends--essential
people in her life--whom she swears visit her. These visitations may
well be manifestations of the extrasomatory extensions of self. We need
the key others in our lives to complete our identity. We need them as
add ons without whom we cannot perform the functions of which they were
formerly a part. We need them so badly that when they disappear from
our lives our brains must summon them just as the brain automatically
summons phantom limbs. It's merely a hypothesis, but one worth testing.
Howard
1) the extrasomatory extensions
of the self concept I've been trying to work out within the confines
of the paleopsych group; See what you think: "Group level ideas also play a role in contemporary interpretations of the behavior of some cetaceans. Jerison (1986: 163-164) noted that 'information from echolocation can be sensed at the same time by several individuals,' which led him to suggest that dolphins may experience 'communal cognition,' something akin to 'an extended self…constructed (and experienced) by a group of several animals.' A long-term study of Hawaiian spinner dolphins led Ken Norris (1991b: 13) to conclude that, as with colonial ants, 'a spinner dolphin alone is very much less than a whole animal.' Norris (1991b:13-14) elaborated: "It was only after much looking that we began to understand another key feature of [the spinner dolphins'] lives: they are so thoroughly creatures of their schools that they have surrendered some aspects of normal mammalian individuality to the group…. [Spinner dolphins] live locked in the geometry of their schools, playing out a life-long cat-and-mouse game with their predators…. [The dolphins'] ultimate defense is to behave like schooling fish. In doing so, their individuality is suppressed in favor of the school.' "At other times,
with echolocation providing an early warning system to detect predators,
these dolphins can 'afford to express all the complexity and individuality
of their mammalian heritage…. But should the predator swim close,
they then must revert to the fish's strategy, the school, in which they
become faceless ciphers, obeying without question a group strategy.'
(Norris 1991b: 180-181). Is this something more than Hamilton's (1971)
"selfish herd"? This intriguing but controversial proposal,
put forward by a scientist well known for provocative ideas that have
inspired the careers of innumerable cetacean biologists, awaits its
turn for further scientific scrutiny." _______________________________ Howl Bloom: look at Bily Joel, Paul Simon Howl Bloom: Stephen Spielberg Blessed Corvus: Spielberg is famous largely because of his money, not by himself. Howl Bloom: Jews are excluded from a lot of things--unofficially kept out of the boardrooms of major corporations Blessed Corvus: That's news to me Howl Bloom: excluded from George Bush's cabinet Howl Bloom: but we flourish in the areas the gentiles don't care about Howl Bloom: entertainment Howl Bloom: intellectual stuff--Noam Chomsky is a big name Blessed Corvus: Who is he Howl Bloom: and has more than a small share of adulation and fame Howl Bloom: a linguist whose political stance had made him famous for about three decades Blessed Corvus: What was he about? Howl Bloom: and whose theories of language are basic--stuff every intellectual--which means you, Corv Howl Bloom: has to know Howl Bloom: start by going to the Encyclopedia Britannica and looking him up when we finish, ok? Blessed Corvus: I've his name down Howl Bloom: Chomsky says that language is built into our brains Howl Bloom: good girl, Corv, I like you a great deal Howl Bloom: built in in what he calls "deep structures" Howl Bloom: which is why every language there is is built on an identical structural pattern Howl Bloom: because that pattern has been hammered into our brain Howl Bloom: now we go beyond Chomsky Howl Bloom: Chomsky never says how the deep structures got there Howl Bloom: Evolution held the hammer and tap tap tapped them into us Howl Bloom: over eons of time Blessed Corvus: mmhmmm ::still here:: Howl Bloom: because language was a tool which helped those who had it survive Howl Bloom: so those who had it stuck around long enough to have kids and take care of them Howl Bloom: they flourished not just because language helped them eat well, make good housing, and cooperate in ways Howl Bloom: those without language could not Howl Bloom: cooperate to overlap their strengths and fill in each others weaknesses Howl Bloom: and make of a multitud a public brain Howl Bloom: a mass learning machine Howl Bloom: just like the many you and I are parts of Blessed Corvus: <found his bio> Howl Bloom: a HA Howl Bloom: good girl, excellent pupil Howl Bloom: how in the world did you find me? Blessed Corvus: My luck, I s'pose Howl Bloom: this is a bit beyond serendiptity, don't you think? Blessed Corvus: You've taught me things that I liked. Howl Bloom: and you've asked questions and given me aphorism of great strength and....Corv...wisdom Blessed Corvus: You learn as you teach Howl Bloom: I enjoy the questions enormously Howl Bloom: yes Howl Bloom: you help me express things I wouldn't otherwise take the time to write down Howl Bloom: ok, Corv, you and I have a project I want you to take on with me Howl Bloom: spinner dolphins act as a mass mind Blessed Corvus: Hmm what manner of project ::suspicious:: Howl Bloom: hang on while i get you the quote I plucked the other day Howl Bloom: don't be suspicious, Corv, you know me well enought to realize i am well intentioned Howl Bloom: lemme get the quote Howl Bloom: hang on, ok? Blessed Corvus: Hanging, swinging. Howl Bloom: I just sent you an email with a posting I sent to my group a few days ago Howl Bloom: it's on the fact that spinner dolphins are a part of something much larger than themselves Howl Bloom: they are modules in a mass mind Howl Bloom: with its own mass identity Howl Bloom: just as you and I are, which is why people are so dumb Blessed Corvus: What sparks your interest in the mass mind Howl Bloom: because each has a bit of knowledge others don't Howl Bloom: but add up our stupidities Howl Bloom: jigsaw them together in a social structure of the right kind Howl Bloom: and voila Howl Bloom: you have got yourself more than just stupidity Howl Bloom: you have the wisdom the invisible hand, of the mass mind Howl Bloom: my interest in the mass mind, a long story Howl Bloom: very long Howl Bloom: with lots of adventures along the way Howl Bloom: which means I either must find something I've written in the past which explains it Howl Bloom: or save the answer for another day Blessed Corvus: I read this, but I will reread it a few times later on, to fully understand. Howl Bloom: Lord, Corv, my girlfiend didn't call before she went to sleep, I love Howl Bloom: to put her to sleep by just talking to her Blessed Corvus: A pleasant feeling, if you can do that Howl Bloom: apparently I am very good at it Blessed Corvus: She must like you, then. Howl Bloom: her parents couldn't understand why I don't have a radio show because Howl Bloom: apparently I have a rich voice Howl Bloom: it sounds nasal to me Howl Bloom: but not to others it would seem Howl Bloom: Corv, thanks for saying that, it warms me Howl Bloom: that the fact that my voice makes her feel good means she likes me Howl Bloom: she let me talk her into babiness for 45 minutes tonight Howl Bloom: to talk her into softness and warmth Howl Bloom: to talk her into coziness Howl Bloom: it felt SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good Howl Bloom: I love her Corv Howl Bloom: what would you define as the difference between love and lust? Blessed Corvus: Hm. Howl Bloom: you differentiated the two last night...hmmm...I'm Blessed Corvus: Lust is animalistic, love is human because it's calculatingly selfish. Howl Bloom: about to lose the train of thought on spinner dolphins Blessed Corvus: spinner dolphins swam away =P Howl Bloom: Corv, you are remarkable, you literally amaze me and I love to be amazed Blessed Corvus: I smile at your words. Howl Bloom: tell me more about calculating selfishness Howl Bloom: then I will see if you'd like to help me with something Blessed Corvus: Love is selfish because it makes you feel noble and hence superior. Howl Bloom: hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, try this Blessed Corvus: You're noble because you're a protector - which also makes you strong, in your eyes. Blessed Corvus: Try what? Howl Bloom: in every solid and lasting love relationship Howl Bloom: each partner must be able to be two people Howl Bloom: a child Howl Bloom: and a parent Howl Bloom: if you and I were in love you would have to have the ability to mother me and Howl Bloom: to soften and let the child in you out so I could protect and love and father it Blessed Corvus: Hm. Alright. That's our given. Blessed Corvus: Eh, I meant that I follow you so far =) Howl Bloom: you would have to have the comfort of knowing that I was strong and could nest you, as I nest Casey, my cherished and beloved (I'm not kidding) girlfriend Howl Bloom: and when I grew weak, which would happen several times a day Howl Bloom: I would have to know that you could do the same for me Howl Bloom: eventually a fifth entity would grow up between us Howl Bloom: a joint personality Howl Bloom: a small mass mind of a very intimate kind Howl Bloom: a personality which was neither you nor me, but an intersect, an overlap, a linkage of what we make together Howl Bloom: like separate notes making a chord Howl Bloom: of music Howl Bloom: like separate musicians playing together in a dixieland band Howl Bloom: who give that band a character all its own if the musicians are creative Blessed Corvus: Mmhm. Still following. Howl Bloom: or who give the band a dull and shopworn identity if the musicians are hackneyed and cliched Howl Bloom: but an group identity which transcends the individuals who make up its corpuscles Howl Bloom: one of those would grow up in a year or two or three Howl Bloom: between you the mother, you the child, and me the father and the me of infancy Howl Bloom: so there would be five of us in this joint mind Howl Bloom: father, mother, girlchild, manchild, extended self or joint identity Howl Bloom: a superorganismic entity Blessed Corvus: a pentagram Howl Bloom: that is the group self the dolphins also create through the way Howl Bloom: in which they inter relate Howl Bloom: I call it a quinity Howl Bloom: like a trinity, but with five members instead of three Blessed Corvus: I follow, I follow =) Howl Bloom: god the father, god the son, god the holy mother, god the girlchild Miriam Howl Bloom: and the holy spirit which flickers from them like a flame whisking transcendally over a burning quartet of charcoal briquets Howl Bloom: transcendentally Howl Bloom: now want to hear what I propose we do? Blessed Corvus: Mmhmm, let's hear it Howl Bloom: that quote on the dolphins, it has several names associated with it--cited in it Howl Bloom: of the researchers who arrived at this notion of an extended or group identity Howl Bloom: I want to find their email addresses and whatever papers they have online Howl Bloom: and learn more about their findings Howl Bloom: but I haven't had the time to slake my curiosity, I've been incredibly swamped and busy Blessed Corvus: Mmhmm....? Howl Bloom: so I wonder if you'd like to help me prowl the web and find out more about these guys and their ideas of dolphin holy ghosts, dolphin extended entity Howl Bloom: the flame of group soul among the mammals of the sea Blessed Corvus: I haven't much free time that isn't used somehow. Blessed Corvus: allotted, rather. Howl Bloom: any interest or time to paricipate? Howl Bloom: moi aussi, chere mademoiselle Howl Bloom: it was just a thought, it might be exciting or it might be frustrating because Howl Bloom: I'd have a hard time finding the spare minutes in which to read what you might turn up Howl Bloom: well then Howl Bloom: let's just stick to questions, answers, and interchange of ideas, ok? Blessed Corvus: That seems fair, friend Howl =) Blessed Corvus: And seems to have worked Howl Bloom: yes, very well, dear Corvus Howl Bloom: ok, let me go for the night and wish me well as I will wish you pleasant dreams, a good sleep, Howl Bloom: and the exhilaration which helps a seeker of knowledge soar Howl Bloom: quothe that corvid bird the raven, may your brain find wisdom evernore Howl Bloom: evermore Blessed Corvus: I hope I'll never lose that exhiliration. It's been responsible for a good deal of my accomplishments =) Blessed Corvus: You're going back to the emails and research, then, hm? Howl Bloom: you shall tell me of them some day, ok? Howl Bloom: and of your romances, those are important learning experiences, Corv Howl Bloom: I like to help people overcome romantic difficulties, it teaches me huge amounts of things Blessed Corvus: Of the dreams? I will. Last night, for instance, I dreamt of a house with someone hostile, and I descended into the basement, and there were some frightened people there, and I found melee weapons, and I was sporting them as I explored it. It seemed to havebeen carved of stone. Howl Bloom: about the basic nature we share as human beings Howl Bloom: wow Howl Bloom: I wnat to hear of your accomplishments and your romances, but what are melee weapons, this is a vivid dream, I Howl Bloom: can see it, Corv, I can see it literally Blessed Corvus: You know what's melee.. In partifular, I had a.. like a curved quarterstaff, but I dont know why it was curved, and I had two sabers on me. The general hue was light gray. Howl Bloom: wow this is weird, I 've been seeing the dreams of my girlfriend more vividly than my own and now I see that basement, I see that upper story, I see that menace in the shadows of the upstairs hallway Howl Bloom: amazing Howl Bloom: there is an article I've wanted to recommend to you on the origins of war Blessed Corvus: Oooh! Howl Bloom: go to my website's page on Jericho Blessed Corvus: Gimme! Howl Bloom: if I recall correctly, at the bottom of the page is a list of other resources on Jericho Howl Bloom: which was not only the first city to exist Howl Bloom: but the first to be protected by a wall...by fortifications of stone Howl Bloom: you'll see a history of war there Howl Bloom: though that might not be what it's called Blessed Corvus: Hmm.. lemme find it again.. Howl Bloom: use the hyperlink and it will take ou wher you need to go Howl Bloom: howardbloom.net Blessed Corvus: Eh, this is a different page from the black background page. Blessed Corvus: oic Howl Bloom: yes, there are 25 pages on the website Blessed Corvus: there we go Howl Bloom: and hundreds of hyperlinks...GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Howl Bloom: see? I am not such a ghastly guru, am I? (he says, needing reassurance, as we all do but are taught not to confess) Blessed Corvus: between 11,000 and 10,0000 years ago. Blessed Corvus: fix that up Howl Bloom: yes Blessed Corvus: Not too ghastly =) Howl Bloom: hmmmm, I can't do it now, my registers have overflowed, I'm running close to 20 programs simultaneously Blessed Corvus: That bas relief was in Jericho? Cant be! Howl Bloom: my computer's in danger of blowing its brains out and losing tons of stuff I haven't had time to store Blessed Corvus: This is bronze-age work! Howl Bloom: yes, but it's an artist's imagining the scene Howl Bloom: nope not bronze age Howl Bloom: roughly 1450 ad Italy Blessed Corvus: Ahh huh Howl Bloom: from a church door Blessed Corvus: See, I read that later on Blessed Corvus: 15th century about Jericho. Not originating there.. I was gonna say =P Howl Bloom: one panel depicting Joshua crossing the Jordan river to storm Jericho Howl Bloom: yup, you got it, wise one Blessed Corvus: Funny thing.. Blessed Corvus: I printed that textfile before Blessed Corvus: a few days back. yesterday? two days? Howl Bloom: which file? Howl Bloom: the history of war? Blessed Corvus: the neolithic warfare one Howl Bloom: it's broadly disseminated on the web Howl Bloom: appears in about five locations full and intact Blessed Corvus: Mmhmm.. It's.. it's good. I had an index of history of warfare, pre-bronze age Howl Bloom: a HA Blessed Corvus: I have it somewhere, still Blessed Corvus: I've too many saved pages, in my 'favorites'. Blessed Corvus: I never clean it.. Howl Bloom: well if you find any info on paleolithc or pre-paleolithic warfare, by all means let me know Howl Bloom: hmmmmmm, Corv Blessed Corvus: Hmmm, friend Howl? Howl Bloom: you can categorize your bookmarks Blessed Corvus: I know =) Howl Bloom: and turn them into a functioning library Blessed Corvus: But it's time-consuming. Howl Bloom: it's worth it Howl Bloom: I wonder if I should, or even could, send you my bookmark file Blessed Corvus: I should invest twenty minutes into it. Howl Bloom: it has thousands of things all categorized Blessed Corvus: For real! Howl Bloom: yes, please do Blessed Corvus: Lemme see how to do that Howl Bloom: ok, I will try, no guarantees, but I will do it right now Howl Bloom: then I have to eat and sleep Blessed Corvus: windows\favorites Blessed Corvus: That folder Howl Bloom: see you tomorrow in all probability, ok? Howl Bloom: no Blessed Corvus: Most likely. Howl Bloom: use a browser Howl Bloom: use Netscape if you can Blessed Corvus: No, Im saying that that's where the favorites are stored, for MS. Blessed Corvus: err for MSIE Blessed Corvus: Do you use netscape or IE Howl Bloom: Netscape 4.7 Howl Bloom: it's easier to organize the bookmarks, which are useless if not categorized Howl Bloom: and it's much faster than IE Howl Bloom: much Howl Bloom: hugely much Howl Bloom: dear Corv, please toss me a smile and send me off to shut down the day's work or I shan't get to bed until three am Howl Bloom: ok? _______________________________ In a message dated 97?07?17 16:10:46 EDT, Peter Frost writes: << Would you, however,
have put up Peter??If the billboard is a gaudy tail or beak, numerous studies indicate that it decreases your: 1) ability to access food; and 2) your possibility of eluding predators. Your personal payoff may be that you get to reproduce far more than others do. On the downside, you've upped your odds that you'll never get to reproduce at all. Studies also indicate that detail work on glitzy features are good indicators of low parasitism, high intelligence and vigor. But does the slim possibility of hitting a jackpot really compensate for all the risks? Remember, the contending show?offs generally belong to highly polygynous species. The chances are (I am guesstimating here) that roughly 80% of males will never get to mate. I suspect that Amot Zahavi's handicap principle indicates the personal liability outweighs the benefit. Try this on for size. Members of a group are extended phenotypes of each other. The group itself, with its numerous advantages, is an extended phenotype. Males are extensions females use to test out genes. The more rigorous the obstacle course through which the males are forced, the greater the advantage to the female. Genes unlikely to generate reproducing progeny will be weeded out. The advantage to the males is questionable indeed. The male fulfills his role through his expendability. Gaudy birds are common in the equatorial zone, but far less so in the colder north. Here females can't afford to sort their males in such a destructive way. They need a male to help provide their brood with food. Hence as an instrument of the female, the best male is one who is not only smart, strong, and parasite free, but who is sufficiently camouflaged to live out the season and consistently bring home the groceries. Though the tropical male's neon eat?me sign is advertising indeed, it is an aid not to its possessor, but to the opposite gender. Howard _______________________________ a social superorganism or social group is what Richard Dawkins calls an "extended phenotype." (for extended phenotype see The ant and the peacock : altruism and sexual selection from Darwin to today / Helena Cronin; Richard Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype, 1982). Those genes do best which code for the greatest agility of the social group or of its most potent defense. Agility to take advantage of opportunity. Defense to fend off attacking animals, insidious plants (there are quite a few), and disasters like parched or frozen earth which whisk all source of food away. Hence those genes have the edge which build their immediate phenotypes--the individuals with whom they reside--to function as components of the most powerful forms of coordinated group activity. For example, Helena Cronin
(roughly p. 63?) goes to great length to trot out the tortuous explanations
proposed by individual selectionists for a snail the members of whose
species live within the same micro-environment, yet which vary in tiny
details of exterior decor--a yellow stripe on one, a black stripe on
another, many stripes on a few, almost no streaks on their counterparts,
colors ranging from pinks to grays. She settles on the idea that within
the seemingly uniform evironment there are micro-niches too subtle for
most naturalists, with their human size, to notice, but whose shifts
make all the difference to the snails themselves ("Put yourself
in the shell of the snail" to see these alterations, said Alfred
Wallace, to whom Cronin gives more credit for his evolutionary contributions
that most others do). Indeed, snails whose patterns are drab and uniform
do far better on smooth turf at evading birds who enjoy a good escargot.
Snails more garish in their "paint jobs" outdo than their
plainer conspecifics in brush and tangled foliage. Snails with light
coloring do better in the sun. Those who are dark do better in the shade.
However, could there be a group-oriented explanation for this variation,
as well as those which Cronin has ennumerated? Fish swim in a school
and change direction in synchrony with amazing rapidity to present the
illusion of a shimmering mylar sheet, a shifting surface of reflective
confusion woven from many swimmers of small size. Cronin mentions that
the birds who feed on snails have more problems recognizing an object
of their prey if each morsel is done up very differently. In which case,
each snail may be an extended phenotype of its neighbors. The more variation,
the later in life a bird might learn to sort its way through the profusion.
As a multitude, the snails offer a hard-to-comprehend commotion of form
and color to potential diners who would prefer to find their catch with
far greater ease. Raucous aberration may be a way for a group of snails
to overload their enemy's food-locating brains. To what extent do those who subject themselves to such a dangerous gamble contribute to "kin selection"? To what extent are they serving genes as close as possible to their own? Less than modern theory insists. But more than not at all. To mate with a nearly identical relative would court disaster for the larger genotype, producing qrotesqueries which would doom the entire genetic team further down the line. No gene can afford to be totally selfish under these circumstances. (Unless we except the "junk genes" which theory proposes tentatively are inconspicuous free riders.) The animals we know use odor--MHCs--to assure that they are NOT choosing a mate who is close to being their genetic twin. The genome chain behind this piece of clockwork in which individuals are merely gears and pinions is more than prepared to sacrifice individual links, individual genes. Genes which contrive to survive despite the rigors of the larger system are the cheaters who will sink the team entirely. They cannot survive if they take down the genomic crew which sustains them. They must be "willing" to undergo their sacrifice to achieve the haven of a home. No gene can live alone. So the competition between genomes is a never ending tournament between troops of interconnected genes. These genetic squadrons, in turn, create competing phenotypic social ensembles in which individual members play interlocking roles, some of them occasionally suicidal. Genomes do watch out for similarity. They will mate only with genomes within their own species. But the near identicality which Hamilton and the individual selectionists postulate simply isn't found even in the infamous archetypal example--the hive of sister bees. Even in this communistic group, the female contesting for procreation leaves her relatives at mating time, risks her life (very few would-be queens survive), consorts with unrelated males who've travelled quite a distance for a sexual ritual which will end their lives completely, gathers the sperm of six or seven frantically competing lovers, and, if she is lucky--for she's a genomic gamble too--survives to give birth to a group of offspring who carry a wild mixture of genes. The concepts of the selfish
gene and its cousin, kin selection, are extremely useful. But they are
necessary stepping stones to something which must be far broader if
it hopes to fit reality. They set a necessary stage. But now let's have
the play. _______________________________ IF If you can keep your
head when all If you can dream--and
not make If you can make one heap
of all your If you can talk with
crowds and keep Stirring, eh? Kipling has hit many of our hierarchical instincts smack on the head. he's put in words the displays of magnificence, calm, control, strength, and confidence male chimps use when facing off against each other for dominance. However once the display is over, the chimps amble ever so majestically out of the chimp equivalent of an arena into the bush, hide themselves behind a rock, look to make sure that no one, but absolutely no one, can see them, then allow their faces to show all the emotions they'd suppressed while strutting regally before their rival and their audience. their lips fly up in a grimace of sheer terror. Frans de Waal has actually seen these hidden masters of all circumstance try to tug their lips down to regain some semblance of normalcy. but the terror is too great. fingers aren't strong enough to overcome cheek muscles powered by the need to express fear. OK, that's the mask. It is based on showing utter self sufficiency. Now for Shakespeare's words about the innermost reality: When, In Disgrace With Fortune and Men's Eyes by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) When, in disgrace with
fortune and men's eyes, Shakespeare's hero is
utterly dependent on the way he's seen in other men's eyes. In fact,
he lives and breathes the necessity of being seen, and of being regarded
positively. The chimp, too, accidentally revealed how much he relies
on the judgement of others when he went behind the rock and triple-checked
to make sure not a soul would see his outburst of emotionality. His
self-sufficient demeanor of a moment ago was a sham aimed, ironically,
to give him the fuel of others' admiration. How can a beast be self-sufficient
if he needs the respect of others so badly? Nando nailed it magnificently.
_______________________________ Aa: To me, that poem is
about knowing what matters. I have a friend (sort of an adopted <<
dad) who's 76, and he finally, finally understands what's important
in life. It's a beautiful thing to see. He gave me the most profound
hug I've ever had. His life has been so full and he is so feeling and
so in intimate touch with himself that he can really connect with other
people in a way most people can't. (I digress...as usual.) >>
hb: it's not a digression--an empathic understanding of others via a
deep, emotional and intuitive understanding of oneself is key to having
a life that makes a contribution to others. and contributing to others
in a way they recognize gives us confidence and energy. It does so by
telling us we are truly needed. That need is the social food on which
we live. aa: ..maybe not in the
moment...but eventually. Probably. This isn't the reason to behave in
a certain way...but there usually a "reward" of some kind
that comes from it -- although one that shouldn't be strived for. hb:
here's where the irony, and perhaps a refutation of my theory, comes
in. experiments have shown that when you ask kids to draw something
creative they often will. on the other hand, if you offer them a dollar
to draw something creative, they will, indeed, draw something. but it
won't be the least bit creative. it will be as conventional as can be.
let me propose an interpretation of this finding derived from the "Bloom
Extrasomatory Extensions of the Self Hypothesis." we will work
our tails off, and even soar imaginatively when we are performing not
only for the audience inside our selves, but for a muse we know will
see our work. without the muse--a person who wants what we have to offer--I
can tell you as a writer, the words simply do not flow. i can also tell
you as a graphic artist that when no one is excited about my surrealistic
photography, I'll go for months without shooting one picture. when there
IS someone with enthusiasm out there begging for my work, i will literally
shoot 30 photos a day. I need the muse, the person outside of myself
who guarantees me attention, to make whatever's inside me come to life.
aa: The point is to live well (by that, I mean being a good person,
making a difference, etc) not to live for the reward, which is the by-product.
hb: I agree with you whole heartedly. However if my interpretions is
right, living to be a good person for its own sake is actually living,
as you said, to win the praise and riveted gaze of others somewhere
down the line. Or, better yet, to get the powerful blaze of attention
and gratitude that comes when we are working like hell--preferably for
no money--to save someone from pain...or even to carry them over an
insuperable obstacle, like the snow that trapped my friend's elderly
woman's car. hb: friggin' MARVELOUS.
Their children were raised by the whole band, so it didn't much matter
who went behind the bushes with whom. But, once people turned agricultural,
there were carrot patches and SUMC's (Sport Utility Mule Carts) to pass
down. "[Upon] the chastity of women," observed Samuel Johnson
in the 1700's, "all property in the world depends." In support
of the (soup) stock market, religion and culture became chastity cheerleaders,
and eventually, men also got swept up in all the un-fun. The economic
reasons for virginity crumbled with the invention of reliable birth
control and DNA testing, but religion and culture refuse to uncross
their legs. Unfortunately, with marriage happening later and later these
days, some find themselves clinging by their fingernails to the virginity
bandwagon well into their thirties. Not a good thing. Frankly, if more
people had more sex, there would probably be less road rage. hb: Amy,
have you ever thought of writing a book? Have you already written a
book? If you want, we could try to develop something for the New Paradigm
book series I executive edit (it's a part of the International Paleopsychology
Project). Or we might simply work on getting it published without the
New Paradigm imprimatur--since that's reserved for highly accessible,
terrifically written (you qualify on both those counts hands down) books
presenting very new ways of looking at things. One way or the other,
let's talk Alkon books! Getting back to your hands-free friend: I'm
no virginity expert (please, no hooting), but it's unlikely that this
guy is simply waiting 'til the "I do's" are done to start
swinging naked from the chandelier. Express interest in hearing his
views, listen, then tell him how you feel. You might squeeze the occasional
handshake out of him...in the privacy of his home. Just don't count
on staying up all night thumb-wrestling. The most important question
is one you should ask yourself: As a woman who considers herself "very
sexual," how compatible are you, ultimately, with a guy who considers
his palm one of his "privates"? hb: this is terrific. but
here's where the bloom theory of attention as the oxygen of the soul
comes in. it sounds like this guy is avoiding more than sex. i'd bet
he's averting his gaze far too often and turning his back when the two
are in bed. the real deal is not the interpenetration of private parts,
it's the intepernetration of powerful, warm, emotional attention. how
about hugs? those are important too. remember Harry Harlow's experiments?
baby monkeys preferred a terry-cloth-covered articial mother to one
who fed them milk, but wasn't the least bit fuzzy (she was made of chicken
wire). We need not just the attention of the eyes, but the attention
of the hands and arms and skin. Body warmth pressed against us fills
our empty attentional fuel tanks magnificently. AA: I think you can love yourself without being loved by others -- it isn't easy. But if you rely on the approbation of others, it isn't "self" worth -- it's "other people like me" worth. What's hardest is doing what you think is right when nobody else agrees with you. You can't do this without a strong self. HB<<is there ever such a thing as a person without a self?>> AA: There is a person with an extremely diminished self. Or maybe the self includes crumb-sized self-worth. AA: re: bootstraps -- I do think we're designed to be cooperative creatures. We lack perspective on our own. Is this "design"? hb: bloom sez yes--or it's evolution. let me see if I can quickly haul something out of the hard drive on this...unless, of course, I've done this in a previous letter--I have the memory of vaporized mothball. Well, here comes, raw notes complete with misspellings and all kinds of embarrassing slips-- When we get wonked, bonked, roiled, and boiled by powerfulfeelings--whether they are delightful or nightmarish--a strange thinghappens. We often don't know what tomake of them. Our logical mind has ahard time seeing into the swirl of our visceral passions and making sense ofthem. When we probe the whirl within uswe can posit numerous possibilities. But this guessing is often the best that we can do. What's more, our internal monsoons oftenpelt us with unbearable gales of emotionality. So how do we solve our confusion? We look for someone else to talk to. We babble out our situation to a friend, a relative, a mentor, abartender, or a shrink and beg him or her to tell us what s/he makes ofit. Then, through the words of someoneoutside our self what's going on inside of us gains a little clarity. Now this is very peculiar. Very peculiar indeed. Thetalking self in the left cerebral cortex may be mere inches from the "seatof feeling"--the place (or upper traces of a far-flung hurricane) wherethe basic emotions are doing their thing. Why can't our thinking self see what's happening right under itsnose--or mere millimeters from its dendritic threads? The answer may lie in the evolution of emotion and theself--or so the theory of the extrasomatory extensions of the self says. We evolved not just as individuals, but asmembers of groups whose competition was often a matter of life and death. Those of us who acted as productive plug-insto a group's machinery were likely to survive--and to produce lots ofoffspring. Rugged individualists who refused to become components in a group'sIQ would have had it rough when pitted against a horde of thewell-organized. Some of them would haveliterally been eaten (given the recent evidence on early hominidcannibalism). At the very least, theywould have lost their wives. No mating,no procreating. So the line of lonerswould have soon ceased to be. In ants, a worker's nervous system is wired as a strand in ahive-wide circuitry. The need to connectshows up in the worker's equivalents of gregariousness and uncertainty. She wanders a small distance from the pack,then grows uneasy and feels the need to hurry back. Once she's gotten reassurance from her "friends" shewanders off and explores a bit of far flung territory again. Each time she does a bit of sightseeing shespreads the group's search web--the net of eyes and antennae the hive sends outto hunt for food. Each time thewandering worker returns for the hymenopteran equivalent of tea and sympathyshe inadvertently brings back a report on a bit of previously unchartedterritory. We humans seem to be rigged in similar ways--our psychedrives us to be neurons of a collective brain. To the group it's often less important that we understand our innardsthan that our innards drive us to synapse with others, and to make ourcontribution to the data pool of society. So when we encounter something that troubles or uplifts us, we aredriven both to introspection and to the comfort we can find in sharing ourfears, our furies, and our joys with the company of friends. To them we give reports on the strangeterritories we've explored--realms which range from romance to finance, frommadness to meaning, from pathos to punch lines, and a good deal inbetween. In return our friends give usthe words and concepts with which to interpret our moods. Every time we're driven back to others for a "realitycheck"; we're tuned to interpret our experience using the acceptable formsof expression of the moment. We'replugged into our group's zeitgeist. Andevery time we return to babble our half-digested angsts or triumphs, we expand,even if by only the slightest bit, the ambit of the group's understanding ofits circumstance--its view of its internal and external realities. Self didn't, in all probability evolve as just a way ofnavigating the private paths of solitary life. It seems to be a social billboard and a social interface. Ted Coons, one of our group members,pictures it as a model human inside of us standing in an arena where his or herevery actions are observed by an audience of significant others, the innerrepresentations of our friends and family. The self is also judged by an observer of even greater importance,ourselves, our basic "me." With this model human, this puppet "us" homunculus, we try outthe various ways in which we should dress in the morning, the speeches we coulduse to present an idea, a feeling, a demand, or a request. We see how the model audience would react toeach form of presentation, and most of all how we'd respond to it. If it seems witty, delicious, or appropriateto circumstance it's sent out for implementation by the body and the tongue. If it seems obnoxious it simply disappears. Which means the self may not have evolved as a bridge to ourinterior. It probably evolved as acauseway to the folks with whom we live. A pathway which connects us even tothose with whom we interact but whom we'll never see--the bosses far above ourhead, the farmers who produce our food, the construction crews who built ourhome and the carpenters who built our bed. These ruminations spring from a bit of reading in GeorgeStephanopoulos' "All Too Human: A Political Education." I've reached that part of the book in whichStephanopoulos gets the job of key political adviser to Bill Clinton. Clinton, at this point, is governor ofArkansas and one of many candidates about to run the gauntlet of the primaryelections for president. Bill walksthrough his bedroom and his hallways, taking off his pants, changing intoothers, picking up papers from his night table, constantly spurting ideas, andlooking insistently for new solutions and new ways to bathe in the feedback ofthose around him. Stephanopoulosfollows him through his soliloquies in mid-pants-change and the moment a bitlater when Hilary enters the room and both Bill and Hil are dialoging at fullspeed, bouncing Bills concepts and Hilary's analyses off of Stephanopoulos,looking for his feedback. ButStephanopoulos is not Bill and Hilary's only extracranial extension of theself. Bill frequently asks, "Whatideas do our friends in New York have on this? Are there any new ways of handling this coming in from that group inCalifornia we've been talking to? Whatdo the polls say ithe public mood thinks about this issue right now?" From the mix of incoming signals, BillClinton arrives at a conclusion which he can say with full conviction is his. In fact, his self-confidence and the passionwith which he conveys his beliefs, says Stephanopoulos, puts him head andshoulders above any other candidates whom this well-placed political operativehas ever met. Equally important,Clinton absorbs each audience to which he speaks and adjusts the way he putsthings to make his stump speech intimately personal. He is compelling because he believes in what he says but says itin a way that shows how quickly he's plugged into his audience. So the number of contributors to Clinton's "self"is immense. Stephanopoulos is just oneof many advisors. He and those like himare considered staff--and that staff is large. Then there are the old and trusted friends, the ones with whom the bondsgo back in time. These are the FOB, theFriends of Bill. Clinton grills thesepeople constantly, not only for their opinions, but for input they've gleanedfrom sources spread in nearly every state. If a key FOB like Webster Hubble nixes an idea then it's understood theidea is kaput. This form of reliance on others is occasionally derided asan overdependence on polls. And it canclearly get that way when the candidate is a pale puppet who parrots thepopular thoughts of the day. But in arepresentative government, the self of a candidate is SUPPOSED to representthat of the populace he is elected to serve. In that sense, there is a justification to Louis XIV's pronouncementthat "L'etat cest moi." "The state is me." Or,to put it in democratic terms, "I, the candidate, am myconstituency." Who in this case, is an extrasomatory extension of whom? Bill Clinton is a walking summation of thosearound him--much more so than the average man in the street who doesn't havethe team of social input purveyors available to a politician. He is an extrasomatory extension of thepublic personality. Those from whom hesucks opinions are, in turn, extrasomatory extensions of him--vital feelersfeeding his identity. What, under thesecircumstances, gives a public figure the appearance of having a strong sense ofself--the kind of thing McCain had in spades? Is it sheer self-confidence, despite the contributions from othersof which the self is made? Ischarisma a matter of postural and facial cues--those of an alpha leader, a silverback--anupright walk and masterful talk? Is itthen the flimsiest of masks, but one of great persuasive strength? Where do others stop and we begin? Why is the self so calmed by the others and so often jolted bythe incoherent feelings from within? Howard _______________________________ . Turbulent emotion tends to be something that confuses us a greatdeal. We are not sure how to interpretit, as the experiments of Schachter, and Singer (Cognitive, social andphysiological determinants of emotional state. Psychologicalreview, 1962, 69, 379-99) indicated. In this classicstudy, Schachter and Singer injected their subjects with adrenaline. Up went heart rates and alertness, sweatypalms, and other indications that the adrenaline was doing its thing. But it took social input for the subjects tointerpret what they were feeling. If ashill in the group got angry and stomped out of the room, many of the othersexcited by adrenaline took his cue and interpreted their chemically-causedarousal as anger. If there was no shillthrowing a tantrum, the sujects stayed calm. How confused they might have been by their symptoms wasn'treported. In real life we're often hit by a powerful emotion,disturbed or elated by it, and run off to others to discuss it, get reassuranceabout it, and find out how to interpret it. So strong emotions which roil us often send us running to others. Which means that emotions of this sort callus to use the social system as an extra-cranial extension of mind. The limbic/visceral emotions hit us withvarious forms of uncertainty or needs to share and to get the equivalent of thehugs an agitated chimp seeks out. Wetake the feedback we get and use it to formulate an explanation for our emotionin the verbal brain. Which means thatin many cases the limbic system uses conversations with friends to feed itssignals back into the left brain interpreter--our logical, verbal self. This is reminiscent of Kurt Goldstein's patient Scheider,who had taken a bullet to the back of the head, suffered damage to parietallobes apparently responsible for passing information from the right to the leftbrain, and whose non-conscious mind compensated by setting up an elaborate hand signalling system of whichSchneider himself was virtually unaware. Goldstein discovered this outer path from one brain area to another bytying Schneider's hands to his sides. When his hands were free, Schneider could read a document out loud. With his hands tied, he couldn't. The material his right brain was readingcouldn't make it to the left brain where it would have been turned into spokenwords. Again, Schneider was totallyunaware of the hand signals worked out by parts of his brain which hadn'tbother announcing their innovations to his consciousness. The number of outside loops one part of the brain uses to communicate with another isamazing. And it's equally amazing howthese extracranial trunk lines of the mind plug us into the larger informationprocessing apparatus of the group. Howard aa: Perhaps. Whenever you're too close to anything, it's hard to see. The thing you are closest to -- yourself -- is sometimes impossible to see. This is why I have perspective on other people's lives, but it's harder to have it on my own -- sometimes impossible. Maybe you feel the same. hb: absolutely. or did I say that? HB <<To be "the master of my fate" and the "captain of my soul" we DO need to hide most of our pain. Why? So we don't give off social repulsion cues and drive others away. Cries of despair are very unattractive. In fact, most find them impossible to bear. >> AA: Agree. Full disclosure has a high price. I think people look at exposed pain as something they could "catch," like a disease. They run from it. hb: I have theories about why they do--why the need to flee a person in pain and confusion has triumphed as an evolutionary strategy. HB: <<Validation from others is an irreplaceable necessity. Which leads to something else I've been working on, the manner in which attention is our oxygen, the mothers' milk of daily life. With it we thrive. >> I think love is the greatest form of validation. Also the highest form of attention. hb: very well put. HB: <<When we help others, we know more profoundly than in most other ways that they need us. >> AA: Yet another way of being connected. But also, I think helping someone is a way of spreading your values -- almost like spreading your genes, except that there's no biology involved. It's an extension of self...in passing along what the spreader finds good and beautiful...essentially recreating the world in your image in a small way. hb: three cheers, a few dozen huzzahs and a hip hip hooray. my sediments exactly. aa: I think there's love of self to be gained as the reward for behaving well. So there is an audience, but maybe the audience is just you. hb: just you turns out to be a crowd you've swallowed whole at key points in your life. finding your soul--your most passionate self--is a matter of finding those key moments in which the crowd took root in you. aa: That's why people do good works that nobody knows about -- it's assertion of self for self. Knowledge that you made the world a better place...in your own image (that being the compilation of what you think is good and right). Doing what you can to diminish or eliminate someone else's suffering is part of this. hb: no question--replication began at the beginning of this universe and has been going on ever since. Gene teams ain't the only selfish replicators. We humans do want to remake the world in our own image--and in the process get everyone we know to parrot our opinions and feel the ways we feel. Or maybe we want them to feel the way we idealize our selves as feeling. One way or the other, we want to put our stamp on others indelibly--to rivet their attention by holding it eternally in a form that apes us. the irony is we've ingested this self from others. us is them and they are we and we are one and we are not together. HB: <<Virtue is anything but its own reward. It is a way of persuading others to admire us.>> AA: Concur. But virtue isn't always immediately admired...and by not immediately, I mean sometimes not in one's lifetime. So I think the above is a big part of it too. hb: i cry internally for Van Gogh, whose visions weren't recognized until after he'd died. an audience of internal others called the self was not enough to keep the man alive. HB: <<how about
hugs? those are important too. remember Harry Harlow's experiments?
baby monkeys preferred a terry-cloth-covered articial mother to one
who fed them milk, but wasn't the least bit fuzzy (she was made of chicken
wire). We need not just the attention of the eyes, but the attention
of the hands and arms and skin. Body warmth pressed against us fills
our empty attentional fuel tanks magnificently.>> aa: It seems
to me that humans have a biological need -- a physical yearning to be
touched. hb: agreed. there's a magic to a skin-like surface heated to
98.6 degrees. aa: The evolutionary reasons behind this are pretty easy
to leap to -- first, protection against the elements, but also promotion
of procreation and banding together into groups (beginning with the
smallest group possible -- one of two...the exception being an individual
with an ego large enough to qualify him or her as a small crowd...heh
heh.) hb: hmmmm, I hate to get Freudian, but some sort of tropism--a
pre-mapped ability to travel in as-yet-never-seen-before territory is
built into many a newborn. baby turtles have a compass that turns them
toward the sea. they've never walked or seen before, and yet they travel
from the eggshell straight down to the shore and waves. baby tasmanian
devils have to travel from the labia that has extruded them on a hairy
journey roughly 15 times their length to a mother's pouch they've never
seen. and we, we human beings, need the breast. the breast is best and
holding to it's a necessity. what's its temperature? 98.6 degrees. hb:
excellent mindfare, Amy--Howard Howard Bloom wrote: >
Combine the two-the immune system's methods of processing and the >
brain's many separate ways of sifting input, mulling it, stewing it
> around, and making sense of it-and you may have a more intricate
and > able team than we imagined-one doing things throughout the
body and > turning literally every limb and circulatory alleyway
into an extension > of the mind. > > Ps Note that the system
described below works on attraction and > repulsion signals, just
like electrons, protons, animal voices, and > bacterial or human
pheromones. This is indeed noteworthy, because the immune system and
olfactory system(s) function in much the same way, and because there
are parallels, which affect reproduction. For example: humans, like
other mammals, have the ability to sniff out pheromone signatures that
are determined by the locus of genes referred to as the MHC (or human
HLA). Simply put, we can sniff out "tissue type," which might
also be referred to as the relative immunological differences between
self and non-self. That this ability is functional in humans has been
shown with regard to the avoidance of inbreeding. Hutterite women do
not mate at random; they appear to choose for genetic diversity. And
one study showed that women prefer the natural scent of genetically
diverse males to that of genetically similar males. The path to the
future that Howard elaborated on, ends with inbreeding--at least at
the species level. Our immune system and our olfactory system appear
to play equal roles to ensure the future of the human species, just
as these systems ensure the future of many, if not all, other species.
It may also be of interest that the development of our olfactory systems
and our reproductive system depends on the migration of nerve cells
that secrete gonadotropin releasing hormone. These are the only hormone-secreting
neurons that migrate from outside to inside the embryonic beginnings
of the brain. If these nerve cells stop short of reaching the hypothalamus,
Kallmann's syndrome is the result: hypogonadotropic hypogonadism with
anosmia, which means we have no sense of smell and do not reproduce.
Teresa Binstock has been exploring the psychoneuroimmunological correlates
of my psychoneuroendocrinological approach to the effect of pheromones
on human mating behavior. With Milton Diamond, we co-authored "From
Fertilization to Adult Sexual Behavior", which may interest others
on this list, now that Howard has set the stage. The abstract for this
article is HERE: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9047261&dopt=Abstract
Howard wrote (above, which deserves repeating): Combine the two-the
immune system's methods of processing and the brain's many separate
ways of sifting input, mulling it, stewing it around, and making sense
of it-and you may have a more intricate and able team than we imagined-one
doing things throughout the body and turning literally every limb and
circulatory alleyway into an extension of the mind. John McCrone has been indicating how numerous levels of processing in the brain integrate to provide a more flexible dynamic than any single form of processing could produce on its own. Then there are the obvious ways we interlace socially--body language, prosody, ritual, shared entertainment, shared subculture, shared uberculture, and speech. gb: However, I do think that there are neural correlates of resonance. More precisely, one of my post-docs, Mukesh Dhamala, has been analyzing our first hyperscanning expt for evidence of coherence between modes of activity in pairs of subjects playing a zero-sum game against each other while in the scanner. hb: extraordinarily interesting. it would be intriguing to see how long-time opponents brains relate to each other. my latest book, Global Brain, says that the opposition of enemies is one of the greatest forms of synapse between minds. As Sun Tzu says, to win, you have to know your enemy. You have to think as he thinks, feel as he feels, and to absorb his tricks and strategies. In short, you have to turn over enormous amounts of cerebral real estate to comprehending your foe by almost becoming him. We can show this is true behaviorally. But how would it show up neurobiologically and endocrinologically? gb: I think we're seeing evidence that spatially distributed modes of activity hb: great! gb: in the brain have activity timecourses that are coherent at specific frequencies. hb: exactly what I've hypothesized--but never expected to see validated so quickly. when will you publish on this? or, at the least, when will some form of draft be available? gb: Coherence allows for the possibility that activity will not be exactly in phase between the 2 people and may be undergoing slight phase advances and delays during the exchange of information. hb: makes sense. But there are many forms of phasing outside of strict synchrony. Chords are made up of several disparate notes, yet they harmonize. A walking bass on a paino keyboard is very different from the treble melody line, yet both intertwine to make a greater whole. In fact, separated from each other, the two might not even make sense. When you tell the bass section of a chorus to sing its part, it sounds utterly unmusical and dissonant. It ONLY makes sense once you've added in the other three parts--tenor, soprano, and alto. If dynamic patterns in our brains made the greatest sense when tied in with the cerebral patterns of those with whom we interact, this would go a huge way toward supporting a hypothesis central to one of my upcoming books--the notion of extrasomatory extensions of the self. This hypothesis posits that others act as channels through which we pump emotional discomfort or elation in order to get an interpretation we can feed back to what Michael Gazzaniga calls "the narrator" in the brain--the conscious, verbal self. The concept of extrasomatory extensions of self is already supported by such things as the Schachter/Singer experiments, the work of turn-of-the century German neurobiologist Kurt Goldstein, and by work with social insects. I wonder how--or whether--it will have correlates in the results of your hyperscanning. gb: BTW, there are several people involved in this, and I don't want to take sole credit. My main collaborator is Read Montague at Baylor, who is spearheading the client-server software development. Jon Cohen at Princeton and Colin Camerer at Caltech complete our consortium. hb: I've put this in my notes for future reference. > The first book in The New Paradigm Series I executive edit is > Beethoven's Anvil (Basic Books, in preparation)--a work on the > neurobiological and evolutionary aspects of transcendent musical > experience. Both the author--Bill Benzon, a multii-disciplinary > scientist and jazz instrumentalist--and I suspect that in a hot concert > performance, the emotions of the performers synch, then suck the > audience into a common brain harmony. This is something I've > experienced in my fieldwork with Michael Jackson, Prince, John > Mellencamp, Kiss, and numerous other musicians. Is there any way to use > hperscanning to see what happens in a conversation, in a performance, > and in an audience? Theoretically, you could study as many people as you could get in scanners across the net. It's not possible to scan someone while they perform (if yo u've ever seen an MRI, then you know what I'm talking about), but you could certainly measure the coherence of the audience. I suppose you could play back the performance to the performer while they are scanned and look for some sort of autocoherence. I'd have to think about that. hb: it would be tricky. onstage a really great performer goes into a kind of transcendent state. it's utterly unlike anything most folks have ever been through. It feels almost like an out-of-body experience. Let me see if I can find a description in my notes. Here's a tiny quote that gives only the faintest hint: "The really superb performers are wrenched out of themselves with nearly every performance. In fact, every single performance in John Mellencamp's case, which is why he claims he hates performing. It is a form of bliss bordering on torture. Prince and Jackson never allowed anyone into their dressing rooms for the critical hour after a performance. That's the time in which the artist comes back slowly and painfully to his own body, his own identity. " Here's another squib that may give a more concrete idea: "If you're a performer you have two different selves. There's the self that goes on about its business in the everyday world, carrying on conversations according to social ritual, saying "hello, how are you?" and answering that you're "very well, thank you." Then there's another you that comes out when you're onstage, or are faced with a blank page and the task of writing a lyric. That second self emerges from someplace hidden deep within you. It's a ball of seemingly independent energy that flashes around controlled by a personality all its own. It appears and disappears like a comet, and can leave you in your dressing room after a show drained, an empty husk, wondering what exactly has possessed you for the last hour and a half, and waiting for the self you know in daily life to return. When Peter Townshend of The Who was trying to get Eric Clapton off of heroin, he told Eric something like this: "Look, I know what your problem is. When you get up in front of 20,000 people, you gradually begin to feel their energy coursing through you. Then, slowly, you become like a pipeline connected to something divine. And that divinity comes pouring through you to the crowd. But when you go offstage, the force that's been using you tosses you aside. It leaves you empty. And your problem is that you've been trying to fill that emptiness with a drug."" gb: Of course there are
all sorts of similar applications: humor hb: an outstanding choice--one
with a very different social dynamic. If you want, we can discuss the
differences. I've got tons of notes on the subject. These areas--mass
behavior and mass emotion--are among my areas of specialization. gb:
, politics, hb: another outstanding pick--again, with overlapping but
different dynamics. gb: marketing, hb: superb. gb: economics (eg market
sell-offs). hb: yes. the very concept of "value" is based
on mass emotion and mass perception. gb: Think also of the potential
for therapeutic effects: spousal issues, parent-child, peer pressure,
depression, maybe even psychosis. hb: utterly fantastic. let me see
if i can fetch something else from my notes, a bit on schizophrenia
and social disconnection. Some of the following is fact. Some is very
embryonic speculation: "Ted Coons pointed out several days ago
that certain classes of schizophrenics have a peculiar kind of anosmia--a
crippled sense of smell. According to a doctoral thesis delivered at
NYU last week, these patients can smell things--they just have difficulty
identifying what they've smelled. Schizophrenics tend to live lives
isolated from others. They have far fewer extrasomatory extensions of
the self than the rest of us. I get the impression from Ted (and from
my mangled memory) that schizophrenics tend to misread social cues.
If key social cues come to us below the radar range of consciousness.
If, more specifically, key cues arrive via pheromones. And if schizophrenics
misread what they smell, they'd be very out of synch with other human
beings. Not only would they say and do the wrong things, they'd also
put out the wrong aroma for the occasion. And this is, apparently, what
they do. Ted says that it's common lore among those who work regularly
with schizophrenic patients that the schizophrenics have a peculiar
smell. Ted explained part of the reason: schizophrenics fail to smell
the unpleasant aspects of their own odor and don't bathe often enough.
However they may be pumping more negative odor signals into the atmosphere
than just the androsterone that makes armpit sweat off-putting. Others
act as our extracranial extensions-as outside-the-skull add-ons-of our
selves and of our minds. The exuberance when two minds intertwine is
an experience schizophrenics seem unlikely to experience. The brains
of schizophrenics may jumble the processing of social cues and by making
subtle mistakes cut off their victims from the indispensable grafts
we grow to other human beings. Among those tendrils may be those we
smell unknowingly--the bonds we make and break with pheromones."
The emergence of art and language in the human brain. Author(s): Harth, Erich; Affiliation: Syracuse U, Dept of Physics, Syracuse, NY, US Source: Journal of Consciousness Studies. Vol 6(6-7), Jun-Jul (1999). (pp. 97-115). England: Imprint Academic. www.zynet.co.uk/imprint ISSN/ISBN: 1355-8250 Language: English Abstract: Our brains are characterized by sensory pathways that are highly reflexive, allowing higher cortical centres to control neural activity patterns at peripheral sensory areas. This feature is characterized as an internal sketch pad and involves recursive interactions between central symbols and peripheral images. The process is assumed to be the fundamental mechanism underlying most cognitive functions. The paper attempts to portray the beginnings of art and language as natural extensions of these pre-existing internal processes, made possible by the greatly enlarged human prefrontal cortex. It views these highly social activities as originating in subjective, private discourse between the emerging self and its externalized expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2000 APA, all rights reserved) http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/genre/harth1assc.htm, downloaded 7/4/01 THE INTEGRITY PAPERS - James N. Rose Genre Group http://www.ceptualinstitute.com Presentation Abstract Erich Harth Syracuse University EXPLICIT COGNITION THROUGH INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL SKETCHPADS My model of perception and consciousness (1-4) envisions a centrifugal projection of cognition that is implicit in the association areas and cortical 'working memory', onto peripheral sensory areas. Cognition becomes 'explicit' only when images generated there through top-down control become simultaneously viewed and manipulated by higher cortical areas. Thus, in the visual system, re-entrant pathways are able to draw 'mental images' at cortical visual projection areas, and perhaps as peripherally as the LGN. I have invoked hill-climbing mechanisms to account for this 'inversion' of sensory processing, and demonstrated the feasibility of the model through numerous computer simulations. I proposed that consciousness is a phenomenon arising through the mutual interaction between peripheral (more or less retinotopic) imagery and central associations, in a manner which I have called the 'creative loop'. In my present work, I am proposing that the use of external media, as in speech, drawing, and writing, is but a natural extension in which the 'internal sketchpads' are supplemented by even more peripheral storage facilities that have the virtue of larger and more lasting capacity. I find it significant that, as described long ago by Piaget, children's use of language is at first almost exclusively to talk to themselves, which again reinforces the picture of thought and cognition being a loop of activity, in which central cortical areas use peripheral sketchpads. I believe that the explosive use of art in the upper paleolithic is explainable by man's fascination with this new and powerful intellectual tool. I want to mention also, that I would be interested in leading a discussion at one of the workshops on the contents of my recent book "The Creative Loop. How the Brain Makes a Mind", Addison-Wesley, Helix Books, 1995. References: 1. E. Harth, K. P. Unnikrishnan, & A. S. Pandya. 1987. 'The inversion of sensory processing by feedback pathways'. SCIENCE, 237, 184-187. 2. E. Harth. 1995. 'The sketchpad model'. CONSCIOUSNESS & COGNITION, 4, 346-368. 3. E. Harth. 1996. 'Self-referent mechanisms as the neuronal basis of consciousness', in TOWARD A SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Hameroff et al. (Eds.), pp. 611-631, MIT Press. 4. E. Harth. 1996. 'From brains to neural nets to brains'. (Invited paper submitted to NEURAL NETWORKS, Special Issue on Consciousness). THE INTEGRITY PAPERS (LINKS TO CEPTUAL READINGS) NOTICES ~UPDATES ~ COMMENTARIES GENRE WORKS (OTHER WRITERS) POETICS MINDWAYS (LINKS TO GLOBAL THINKERS) OPINIONS ~ REACTIONS "NON-FRACTAL COMPLEXITY" The Roots of Art and Language in Cognitive and Brain Processes Erich Harth, Syracuse University Erich Harth, Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244- 1130 USA. The article relates the evolution of the two exclusively human achievements, art and language, to cerebral mechanisms. I take as point of departure a suggestion by the Danish linguist lb Ulbaek (1992) that language arose not out of more primitive animal communication, but out of animal cognition. In his argument Ulbaek points to the immense gap between animal calls and human language. I have proposed (Harth, 1987, 1995) a cognitive neural mechanism that I called the sketchpad model, in which mental images are generated and manipulated at peripheral sensory areas of the brain through control by higher brain centers. The fundamental process can be described as a sketchpad-in-the-head that involves reciprocal interactions between peripheral neural images and central symbolic representations. By such mechanisms, i.e. by simulating and sampling of mental images prior to executing a task, early hominids were able to design and construct the first tools. Mental images, unlike real sensory patterns, are fleeting and incomplete. One of the consequences of this early cognitive development must have been the heightened perception of similarities between fortuitous patterns (clouds, rock formations) and familiar objects. Such faint resemblances are meaningless to animals. It is not far-fetched to think of the first sculptor reaching out and trying to improve a perceived likeness on a rock wall or lump of clay. Some Paleolithic carvings show how the early artist has built his sculpture around natural rock features. I will portray art as the externalization and manipulation of images, in the same manner in which mental images had been used in thought processes. And, just as thinking, artistic expression is originally an egocentric activity that only later acquired ritualistic significance. Art, then, appears as a natural extension of internal cognitive processes, not as a useless diversion. The time and manner of the origins of language are topics passionately debated by linguists. This paper attempts to describe a plausible path toward a speaking Homo sapiens. We are so used to thinking of language primarily as communication--hence animal calls taken as the forerunner of language--that we overlook its role as a thinking tool. By contrast, I propose that, as in the case of the earliest art forms, language must originally have been a solitary task. It is significant that children use monologue extensively as was pointed out by Piaget and more recently by Merleau-Ponty. The paper will take positions vis-à-vis currently held views on language origin such as those presented by Pinker, Deacon, and Bickerton. I will conclude that both art and language have arisen out of existing cognitive functions and should be viewed as forms of human thought. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?ReqType=301&UserId=SK7D76PQMC&Passwd=welcome, downloaded 7/5/01 In Art of Language, the Brain Matters; Discovery: New techniques let researchers observe neural activity as children read. Understanding how the mind works could reshape classroom instruction. The Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles, Calif.; Oct 18, 1998; ROBERT LEE HOTZ; Sub Title: [Home Edition] Edition: Record edition Start Page: 1 ISSN: 04583035 Subject Terms: Reading Neurology Research Brain Children & youth Abstract: Complicating the process are mental differences in how men and women read; in the brains of those who read poorly and those who read well; even between the same person reading aloud and reading silently. And, unexpectedly, the neurological roots of reading problems may develop well before toddlers are ever introduced to the alphabet. Already, scientists are learning to correct reading disorders by directly attacking the neural processing problems that cause them, actually changing the physical structure of the brain. Indeed, several leading brain researchers are marketing computerized training programs that remold a child's crucial neural circuits, taking advantage of the brain's remarkable ability to rewire itself. "Scientists are euphoric that we have a technology that allows us to look at brains of people while they are reading," said neurologist Bennett A. Shaywitz, co-director of the Yale University Center for the Study of Learning and Attention. Like UCLA, Yale is using brain scanners to study children who have trouble reading. Full Text: (Copyright, The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times 1998 all Rights reserved) For generations, teachers have struggled to correct the reading disorders that handicap one in every five Americans with little more than theory and the informed intuition of trial and error to guide them. Now, by probing the neural processing of written words, researchers for the first time are discovering the true character of reading problems. Surprisingly, they are finding that to every human brain--tailored by evolution to communicate through speech--reading is an unnatural act. As the eye chases a sentence across the page, the brain must perpetually orchestrate neural systems crafted by nature for entirely different tasks, new research shows. So quickly must the brain work that the difference between a good reader and a poor reader may be measured in thousandths of a second. Complicating the process are mental differences in how men and women read; in the brains of those who read poorly and those who read well; even between the same person reading aloud and reading silently. And, unexpectedly, the neurological roots of reading problems may develop well before toddlers are ever introduced to the alphabet. Already, scientists are learning to correct reading disorders by directly attacking the neural processing problems that cause them, actually changing the physical structure of the brain. Indeed, several leading brain researchers are marketing computerized training programs that remold a child's crucial neural circuits, taking advantage of the brain's remarkable ability to rewire itself. These new discoveries offer a glimpse into the future of reading reform, in which classroom instruction would be based on an intimate scientific understanding of how the brain works. "In the past, educational methods . . . have never been based on neuroscience or any research based on an understanding of how the brain actually learns," said UCLA neuro-psychologist Susan Y. Bookheimer, who studies language disorders and the brain. "This is something fundamentally different." At a time when debates over the best way to teach reading are waged with ideological fervor in elementary school classrooms, the systematic study of the brain offers the best hope of solving the problems caused by learning written language, experts say. Reading problems affect as many as 8 million children between the ages of 4 and 13, with an additional 800,000 poor readers diagnosed every year, experts at the National Institutes of Health said. If not corrected by age 9, a reading problem will become a lifetime struggle, according to Yale University studies. New research by Harvard University scientists shows that people diagnosed as poor readers in elementary school still have not caught up on their reading skills even 30 years later. "In the long run, the only way to make really serious progress is to develop a thorough scientific understanding of what is going on in the brain," said Stanford University neuroscientist David Heeger, who studies how the brain visualizes letters and words. Such progress does not come easily--or cheaply. The National Institute of Childhood Health and Human Development has been steadily spending about $21 million a year on research projects that so far have studied 38,000 readers. Teaching experiments are underway at 266 schools. But even so, the gap between the laboratory and the classroom remains all but unbridgeable, experts said, due to long-standing disagreements over the ultimate causes of reading failures. In addition, some research is so new that educators simply have not had time to digest its ramifications. Those who study language and the brain say that poor readers are being diagnosed incorrectly or too late, taught improperly or not intensively enough. Their problems often are misunderstood, even by those trying hardest to help them. "What we know already from research is not being applied in instruction," said language expert Jack M. Fletcher at the University of Texas-Houston. Technique Yields Surprising Insights For the first time, researchers are able to study the living brains of children and adults directly. This revolution in reading research is being driven in large measure by a new generation of noninvasive imaging techniques that allow monitoring of rapid, subtle shifts in mental activity as people read. "Scientists are euphoric that we have a technology that allows us to look at brains of people while they are reading," said neurologist Bennett A. Shaywitz, co-director of the Yale University Center for the Study of Learning and Attention. Like UCLA, Yale is using brain scanners to study children who have trouble reading. "The imaging technology takes a hidden disability and makes it visible," Shaywitz said. The result is a cascade of surprising new neurobiological insights. Scientists are finding that reading: * Depends on two separate but equally important neural systems involving sound and pictures. The brain reads primarily by translating written characters into the phonological building blocks of spoken language. But the brain also links a memorized picture of a complete written word to its meaning, recalling it in a way that bypasses the need to sound out the word. * Is a matter of timing. Experts at Rutgers University have shown that to read well, the brain has only a few thousandths of a second to translate each symbol into its proper sound. Most children can process such sounds in less than 40 milliseconds, but language-impaired children may need up to 500 milliseconds--fast enough to speak fluently, but too slow to read well. * Depends on keeping the mind's eye in focus. Scientists at Harvard, Georgetown University and Stanford University are finding that minor differences in how the brain handles the visual processing of images, color, fast motion and contrast can impede reading. Again, the speed of the visual processing may be crucial. * Is different for men and women. Men do not use their brains the same way to read as women do, Yale researchers demonstrated, yet both sexes are equally afflicted with reading troubles. Nonetheless, boys may be diagnosed more often with reading disorders than girls. * Appears to make the brains of people who read poorly function differently than those who read well, in some ways making them work harder. Yet researchers at Dartmouth, UC Davis and other centers believe that everyone has some trouble adjusting to the written word because it makes such taxing demands on so many different parts of the brain. Moreover, reading disorders originate in children much earlier than previously believed--often years before they are diagnosed in school and well after they most readily may be corrected, language experts at UCLA, Harvard, Rutgers and the University of Texas said. Reading simply does not come naturally to anyone. And what many reading experts traditionally diagnosed as a learning disability arising from a physical defect may instead result from normal variations in how individual brains work. "Reading problems are an expression of an entirely normal brain; it is just that different brains have different abilities," said Judith L. Lauter, director of the Center for Communication Neuroscience at the University of Oklahoma. Indeed, the simple act of reading a book may be one of the most challenging tasks the brain must perform, the new findings of neuroscience suggest. "Reading does not just happen," said UC Davis neurology expert Kathleen Baynes. "It is just a terrible struggle." Our Biological Destiny: Speaking, Not Reading The anatomy of reading is shaped by that struggle. Consider a 45-year-old San Jose housewife known to the scientific world as V.J. To cure severe epilepsy, she recently underwent an unusual operation that surgically separated the hemispheres of her brain. When it comes to reading, she is today of two minds. The left side of her brain can read things it cannot write. The right side of her brain can write things it cannot read. For researchers investigating how people read, she is stark evidence of the special place that written words occupy in the brain, divided by the learning process into the separate acts of reading and writing that lodge in unrelated neural tissues. Her unusual inner struggle to read and write is a living demonstration of the extremes to which written language drives every human brain. While 90% of right-handers process speech and language in the left side of their brain, about 30% of left-handers--like the patient V.J.--process language in the right side of their brain. But written language--as V.J.'s condition demonstrates--is scattered across both hemispheres. Before V.J.'s surgery, her left and right hemispheres worked together seamlessly to coordinate reading, writing and speaking. Now that the halves of her brain can no longer communicate, her left hemisphere attempts to control her language abilities, interfering with her ability to read and write. Unlike speech, written language is an invention so recent that the brain has yet to develop any dedicated neural machinery to handle it. Consequently, it straddles the brain in a way that language alone does not. Said Fletcher at the University of Texas-Houston, "Speech is a biologically evolved skill. We have had speech for 4 million years. We have had written language for 4,000 years. We are biologically destined to speak, but not to read or write." Neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga at Dartmouth said the efforts of the brain to adapt to the cultural demands of written language have a profound effect on its neural structure. "Reading is an invention that is going to have a different neurology to it than the things that are built into our brain, like spoken language," he said. The case of V.J., he said, shows how much learning to read and write alters the brain from the more natural structures that all human brains long ago evolved for spoken language. No one is sure why the process of using written symbols to express a thought should be so separated from the process of extracting meaning from those same symbols or what it may mean in terms of reading ability. "Reading is a bizarre skill--and a very complex process," said Harvard neuropsychologist Alfonso Caramazza, who studies the neurobiological basis of language. A Good Reader's Lopsided Brain Look at the the word "cat." Go ahead, read it again. Now say it out loud. Could you detect any difference in your mind when you saw it, read it and then spoke it? Almost certainly not. But each time, the brain employed quite different neural circuits to perform each task, new brain imaging studies show. Even as simple a word as "cat" can make the reading brain stumble. Reading comprehension depends on the ability to decode and recognize single words rapidly and accurately. Any mental hesitation can destroy the high-speed flow on which reading depends. So far, researchers have identified three neural problems that may make it harder for people to read well: * The inability to identify and sound out properly the internal sounds, called phonemes, that make up words. English depends on the sounds of 44 phonemes and uses only 26 letters to encode them. There are three phonemes in "cat." Many poor readers have a hard time processing these phonological cues. *The inability to make those auditory distinctions rapidly enough. Some brains may process information too slowly and may not be able to distinguish between the sounds from which words are composed. * The inability to quickly resolve the visual patterns of the characters themselves. Some poor readers may stumble because they cannot process visual information fast enough to scan letters on a page. "Mapping a single letter or cluster of letters to a sound may be the most difficult skill in reading," said Caramazza at Harvard. Those educators who have championed phonics instruction are especially heartened by the new research because it highlights the importance of teaching the building blocks of words as part of any school reading program. Scientists are still trying to understand what the brain does that may be unique to reading, as opposed to the more general cognitive chores of memory, attention, pattern recognition, auditory processing and categorization. The visual process involved in recognizing letters, for example, may make use of older neural circuits that originally evolved for recognizing faces. "The challenge for the brain is to take these basic building blocks and then assemble them in some way to compute a meaning," said UC Berkeley linguist George P. Lakoff, who is working on a neural theory of language. Some brain-imaging studies conducted by researchers at Rutgers have suggested that the left side of the brain is faster at processing information than the right side, which may be an important skill when it comes to separating the sounds embedded in speech into distinct units. That may be why language generally favors the left side over the right side. Certainly, researchers have found that children with normal language skills appear to have lopsided brains--the left side is bigger and more active than the right. Children with language disorders appear to have more physically balanced brains, with both hemispheres being of equal size and activity. Some researchers now believe that such physical differences may arise before birth as the developing fetus is exposed to varying levels of the hormone testosterone. Even when brains appear to be physically similar, they may function in quite different ways. Imaging studies that compared how men and women recognize words, sound them out and extract their meaning found striking variations in how people read, based on their gender. Men tended to read with the left side of their brain; women tended to activate both sides of their brain. The Yale researchers who conducted the study believe that those who depend most on the left hemisphere take in text in a more global way. Those who use both hemispheres may take in text bit by bit. In the same way, the brains of many poor readers--especially dyslexics--appear to function differently than those of normal readers, researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center recently discovered. In any case, the brain is so attuned to speech that even for those who grew up without any ability to hear, the neural circuits that handle their sign language still are those usually crucial for any spoken tongue. Nonetheless, when reading English, those same deaf people appeared to use a different part of their brain than hearing people did. None of the language structures on the left side of the brain were activated. Instead, regions of the right parietal and temporal lobes lit up, reflecting perhaps a greater sensitivity to visual and spatial skills when responding to the shape of a letter. Researchers aren't certain what the difference means, only that it may hold one more clue to the mystery of reading. Another part of the reading enigma can be found in how blind people read Braille, using their fingers to find the meaning in printed characters. In a study of how people blind from birth read, NIH researchers discovered that the visual parts of a blind person's cortex were activated as the reader's fingers ran across the Braille characters--despite the absence of any visual input. And when the researchers temporarily disrupted those visual processing areas in the cortex by using special magnets, the blind test subjects made mistakes as they scanned Braille with their fingers, said John Mazziotta, director of the UCLA brain-mapping division. They reacted as if something had passed in front of their eyes, blocking their view of the letters. In effect, their fingers blinked. Researchers now realize that children learn to read with some of the same neural skills they use to learn to speak, underscoring the critical importance of phonics instruction as part of any classroom instruction. Scientists also are starting to learn how changing the ability to read may alter the brain itself. A few experts, impatient with the pace of traditional speech therapy and reading instruction, are designing neural therapy to train better readers. "The more you try with traditional methods, the worse it gets," said Rutgers language expert Paula Tallal, who recently founded a company called Scientific Learning Corp. to market a regimen of computerized instruction for children with reading, writing and overall language problems. Working with UC San Francisco brain expert Michael Merzenich, Tallal's group created computer games meant to retrain the neurons and synapses of the reading brain. Hidden in the games are special tasks that strengthen auditory processing speed, working memory, phonological awareness and the other skills of fluent reading. Only by repeating the tasks thousands of times for weeks are changes wrought in the structure of the brain. To date, nearly 10,000 children have taken the four-to-eight-week course, with many of them showing improvements of up to two years' gain in their reading level, published research indicates. But it still may be a decade or more before scientists can confidently design a classroom curriculum based completely on neuroscience, cautioned Reid Lyon, the neuropsychologist who oversees the federal reading research effort. Despite the avalanche of new scientific knowledge about reading and the brain, Lyon said, researchers are still searching for definitive answers to three basic questions: * How do people learn to read? * What prevents people from reading well? * What can anyone do about it? "Making the connection from the brain to the classroom is a stretch, still," Lyon cautioned. "We are far, far away from looking at what we have learned about the brain to helping teachers understand what to do in the classroom." * A CALL TO ACTION: The Times today launches Reading by 9, a crusade to get our community's children reading in English by the end of third grade. There can be no more excuses for Southern California students' widespread failure to reach this goal. M4 (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) Mind Reading Reading challenges the brain in unexpected ways, new imaging studies show. The highlighted areas in these two PET brain scans show that reading silently and reading aloud involve different parts of the brain's left hemisphere. Areas of the most intense activity are shown in yellow and red. Sources: Bookheimer et al, "Human Brain Mapping" (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) The Reading Brain The brain is designed to talk, not read. To read well, different areas of the brain must decode text by translating letters into the speech sounds. Only then can the brain identify the word the letters represent and draw on the brain's general cognitive processes to find its meaning. (1) Text (2) Decoding (3) Meaning Brains of people with dyslexia process visual movements and patterns differently from normal readers, brain scans show. Highlighted areas indicate greater activity. Note: Word identification, general intelligence, vocabulary, reasoning and concept formation take place throughout the brain during general cognitive processes. Sources: Yale University, Scientific American, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) Symptoms of Possible Reading Disorders At home, a child who is at risk for language and reading problems often: * misunderstands what is said * denies hearing the beginning or middle of a long talk * requests that information be repeated * gives slow or delayed responses * has difficulty telling a story in the correct order * has problems finding the right word to say * uses imprecise words or phrases * uses only a few descriptive words * is reluctant to talk **** In school, a child with language and reading problems might: * have problems remembering or following oral instructions * forget the question when called on in class * seem to daydream in class * do poorly in noisy situations * have problems with ambiguous language, idioms or homonyms * have problems with phonics * have reading or spelling problems * have unexplained behavioral problems Source: Scientific Learning
Corp. (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) Some Reading Disorders Developmental
dyslexia: A person has a problem with speech sounds and decoding single
words while reading. The meaning and order of words (syntax and semantics)
are understood. Intelligence is not affected and may be in the superior
or gifted range. Language-learning disability: This problem affects
all aspects of language, starting at the level of decoding and comprehension.
Verbal intelligence is greatly affected and may be in subaverage range.
Acquired alexia: Reading ability is lost or diminished because of trauma,
tumor or stroke. Hyperlexia: The ability to recognize words is significantly
better than reading comprehension. Exceptional word-recognition ability
is apparent by age 5, but reading comprehension is very poor. Reasoning
and abstract problem-solving are difficult. Source: The New England
Journal of Medicine [Illustration] Caption: PHOTO: Students in North
Hollywood use computer program meant to change neural structure of the
brain.; PHOTOGRAPHER: GEORGE WILHELM / Los Angeles Times; GRAPHIC: The
Reading Brain, HELENE WEBB / Los Angeles Times Credit: TIMES SCIENCE
WRITER Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction
or distribution is prohibited without permission. The strange thing is this. Language and thought are one-or about as close to unity as can be. We think of them as something that flows silently through the brain-through that mush of pink-gray neurons hidden in our skull. But that's not what language is. It's a way of wiring up the brain to the outside world. It's a way of moving things-puffs of air, the tongue, the back of the throat, the fingers, the fists. Language, the raw stuff of thought, is an outside process of lifting muscle, pushing air, and waving for attention. It's an extracranial extension of the brain. Language is so much an outside-of-the skull phenomenon that it raises a puzzle. How did something so external become so internal? How did something so public migrate deep inside of us and become the most private of things? How did thought-the product of lip and arm muscles-free itself of flexors and extensors and become an intimate we? How free is our internal intimacy from the extracranial extensions-the robot arms and mouths-the flying buttresses of our inner cathedral space-that may well have brought our consciousness into being? How much illusion is there to a sense of a deeply hidden, private, personal me? Howard Babies who can Manual babbling casts doubt on language theory Children of deaf studied Joseph Brean National Post Babies of deaf parents babble in sign language and are strong evidence human language is not fundamentally vocal, Canadian researchers say. Just like babies of speaking people gurgle and coo in imitation of their parents' speech, babies exposed to sign language mimic its rhythmic patterns in the narrow "sign space" in front of their chest, according to the team at McGill University in Montreal. Their findings cast doubt on the accepted wisdom that the rate at which a child learns a language mirrors the physiological development of its mouth and vocal chords, said Laura Ann Petitto, a psychologist and lead author of the report in today's issue of Nature. Retrieved September 12, 2001, from the World Wide Web http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v413/n6851/full/413035a0_fs.html&filetype=&_UserReference=C0A804EC46505415D75D2514E7313B9FF1C6 06 September 2001 Nature 413, 35 - 36 (2001) © Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Language rhythms in baby hand movements Hearing babies born to deaf parents babble silently with their hands. The vocal babbling sounds universally uttered by healthy babies at around 7 months of age are fascinating, and have been interpreted as reflecting both the origins of language production in humans1 and the vestiges of the evolutionary origins of language in our species2. Here we study the hand movements of hearing babies born to profoundly deaf parents and find that these children produce a class of hand activity that is distinct from other uses of their hands and which contains the specific rhythmic patterns of natural language ('silent' babbling). Our findings support the idea that babies are sensitive to rhythmic language patterns and that this sensitivity is key to launching the process of language acquisition. The biological basis of babbling has been debated for decades. One possibility is that babbling, as in modern accounts of the origins of human language, is a purely non-linguistic motor activity that results from the opening and closing of the mouth and jaw3-6. Alternatively, babbling could be a linguistic activity that reflects babies' sensitivity to specific patterns at the heart of human language and their capacity to use them7-9 - particularly the rhythmic patterns that bind syllables, the elementary units of language, into baby babbles, and then into words and sentences. To test the motor and linguistic hypotheses, we studied three hearing babies who received no systematic exposure to spoken language and who instead saw only signed language from their profoundly deaf parents, and three hearing babies who were exposed to spoken language. We previously compared the capacity of hearing and deaf babies to babble in another study, in which group differences may have resulted from the babies' different sensory experiences10. The two hearing baby groups were equal in all developmental respects, with the only difference being in the form of language input they received (by hand or mouth). Because hearing babies exposed to sign language do not use their mouth and jaw to learn speech, the motor hypothesis predicts that their hand activity should be fundamentally similar to that of hearing babies acquiring spoken language. If, however, babies are born with sensitivity to specific rhythmic patterns that are universal to all languages, even signed ones, then the linguistic hypothesis predicts that differences in the form of language input should yield differences in the hand activities of the two groups. We recorded all babies' hand activity in three dimensions using Optotrak, an optoelectronic position-tracking system. The hand activity was carried out during presentation with objects and during game-playing in 60-min experimental sessions conducted when the babies were aged about 6, 10 and 12 months. Optotrak sensors accurately measure the trajectory and location over time of light-emitting diodes on the babies' hands with a 0.1-mm precision. Optotrak computations were carried out blind to videotape recordings of the positions of the babies' hands, which on their own are a subjective way to analyse hand movements11. Online videotapes were made of all babies independently for post-Optotrak analysis. Optotrak analyses revealed that sign-exposed babies showed a significantly different type of low-frequency rhythmic hand activity from speech-exposed babies, as well as another type of high-frequency rhythmic hand activity that speech-exposed babies also showed and used almost exclusively (Fig. 1). Figure 1 Hand-movement frequencies calculated for the rhythmic hand activity of sign-exposed (full line) and speech-exposed (dashed line) babies across all ages; for each group, 400 movement segments (200 per group) were randomly selected. Full legend High resolution image and legend (42k) The low-frequency hand activity of sign-exposed babies was mainly generated within a tightly restricted space (Fig. 2), corresponding to the obligatory 'sign-phonetic' space in front of a signer's body that binds all linguistic expression in signed languages (82%); high-frequency hand activity was mainly outside this space (73%). Speech-exposed babies produced most of their high-frequency hand activity outside the crucial linguistic space (92%). Quantitatively, the low-frequency hand activity corresponds to the rhythmic patterning of adult sign-syllables12. We also discovered, after lifting the blind on videotape recordings, that only these low-frequency movements had the qualitative properties of silent linguistic hand babbling10. Figure 2 Learning language: a class of hand movements made by babies with profoundly deaf parents have a slower rhythm than ordinary gestures and are restricted to space in front of the body. Full legend High resolution image and legend (57k) Remarkably, and without relying on the mouth, this silent linguistic babbling was conveyed by babies' hands in a different class of movement from non-linguistic hand activity. These linguistic and motor movements are differentiated by their distinct rhythmic frequencies, which could only result if babies are able to use the specific rhythmic patterns that underlie human language. LAURA ANN PETITTO*†, SIOBHAN HOLOWKA*, LAUREN E. SERGIO‡ & DAVID OSTRY*§ * Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montréal, Québec H3A-1B1, Canada ‡ Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences, York University, Toronto, Ontario M3J-1P3, Canada § Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, Connecticut 06511-6695, USA † Present address: Departments of Psychological & Brain Sciences and Education, Dartmouth College, 302 Silsby Hall, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755, USA
References 1. Locke, J. L. The Child's Path to Spoken Language (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993). 2. Lieberman, P. Human Language and Our Reptilian Brain: The Subcortical Bases of Speech, Syntax, and Thought (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000). 3. MacNeilage, P. F. & Davis, B. L. Science 288, 527-531 (2000). | Article | PubMed | ISI | 4. Locke, J. L. Science 288, 449-451 (2000). | Article | PubMed | ISI | 5. Studdert-Kennedy, M. G. in Cognition and the Symbolic Processes: Applied and Ecological Perspectives (eds Hoffman, R. R. & Palermo, D. S.) 38-58 (Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey, 1991). 6. van der Stelt, J. M. & Koopmans-van Beinum, F. J. in Precursors of Early Speech (eds Lindblom, B. & Zetterstrom, R.) 163-173 (Stockton, New York, 1986). 7. Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. in The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (eds Barkow, J. H. et al.) 451-493 (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1992). 8. Jusczyk, P. W. The Discovery of Spoken Language (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1997). 9. Vihman, M. M. Phonological Development: The Origins of Language in the Child (Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, 1996). 10. Petitto, L. A. & Marentette, P. F. Science 251, 1493-1496 (1991). | PubMed | ISI | 11. Meier, R. P. & Willerman, R. in Language, Gesture, and Space (eds Emmorey, K. & Reilly, J. S.) 391-409 (Erlbaum, Mahwah, New Jersey, 1995). 12. Petitto, L. A. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 97, 13961-13966 (2000). | Article | PubMed | ISI |
Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2001 Registered No. 785998 England.
Howard In a message dated
1/19/2003 10:21:37 AM Eastern Standard Time writes: I think that, to
some extent, the pleasures of active musicking, concert attendance,
and listening to recordings or broadcast, are categorically different
and so not directly comparable to mutually interchangeable. I also think
that we, as a society, need to shift the mix more toward active participation
in all the arts without losing the joys of mediated participation. Even those who hate the star are tuned to him or her. Hatred is a form of attention and bonding. It makes the demon we despise a constant figure in our eyes, a measure we ape by inversion-by trying hard NOT to be what the star represents to us. Some of us are fans of a celebrity. Some of us are anti-fans. But each of us measures a small amount of what we are by where we stand with relationship to a star. I suspect that this, by the way, doesn't just apply to the stars of pop and film-to Jennifer Lopez and to Adam Sandler-it applies to the style and stance of science stars. A great many of us in the psychological sciences have been tuning ourselves to Steven Pinker in the last month or two. I've seen online scientific groups drop nearly everything they've examined in the past to argue the pros and cons of Pinker's latest book-The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Whether they like Pinker or not, a great many evolutionary thinkers and psychologists are currently molding their thoughts around the framework Pinker has built, and are using their opinions of Pinker to scaffold their public identity. Think of the impact Pinker, Lopez, and Sandler are having on the generation that's currently ingesting imprints that will guide it for the rest of its life. To those of us who are older, the infatuation with Pinker-loving and Pinker-bashing or with guessing who J-Lo will marry is a passing thing. To folks five years old, thirteen years old, and 21 years old, Pinker, Lopez, and Sandler are making a permanent impression. They're figures who the "young and impressionable" will measure themselves by for the rest of their lives. Pinker may be young to me, but to those reaching awareness during the current burst of Pinker-glory, Steven is an ancestral figure, an eminent graybeard in the making. Howard Retrieved December 05,
2002, from the World Wide Web It helps us establish, develop and maintain relationships, cement social ties and bond with other members of our social circles. Evolutionary scientists theorise that without the traditional gossip network, society would crumble. How many times have you or a friend started a conversation with: "Have you heard the latest?" "Regaling colleagues with a juicy story is sharing a vital human resource -- gossip." When you see a person huddled in a corner with a friend telling him some piece of rumour about a common acquaintance, remember this is grooming. It is also gossip. It is letting him know he is important enough and liked enough to be trusted with a confidence. The subject of gossip is increasingly attracting the attention of social psychology, anthropology, evolutionary psychology, sociolinguists and social historians. Even philosophers are being drawn into the debate. Numerous books, essays, articles and studies are published annually, and college courses are being taught on numerous campuses. At Oxford University they do not even camouflage the title of the academic course. It is simply a course on Gossip and attendance is at its maximum. British psychologist, Robin Dunbar PhD, in his latest book Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, introduces a provocative theory of why humans came to have language. His argument, now embraced by many enthusiasts, is that verbal communication evolved from a need to indulge in small talk (gossip), leading to social cohesion and mitigating social conflict. It does what primatologists have long claimed grooming does for baboons. How language began has always fascinated us, and though his theory may be a trifle stretched, it will please the supporters of gossip. Geoffrey Miller proposes that language evolved as a courtship device, yet he agrees with Dunbar that language is mostly gossip, and embraces the theory that gossip is grooming. While mutual grooming of primates stimulates production of endorphins (the body's natural pain-killing opiate) it is highly likely that the vocal grooming of gossiping has similar beneficial, physical and psychological effects increasing serotonin in the brain. By gossiping we may be effectively giving ourselves the natural equivalent of small doses of morphine or amphetamines. Space technology brought with it the e-mail, fax, Internet, and the mobile phone, all facilitating our need to communicate and enjoy frequent "grooming". The mobile phone provided an antidote to daily pressures, functioning as a therapeutic activity, a stress- release in a modern fragmented world. The surprise in a recent study has shown that men gossip at least as much as women, especially on their mobile, the modern medium for gossip. Thirty-three per cent
of men indulge in mobile gossip almost every day, versus 26 per cent
of women. They gossip about the same subjects as women, but men prefer
to call it "shop talk", revolving around work, sports and
politicians. Women will not be surprised to learn that men tend to talk
more about themselves than women do. All tabloid journalism is an extension
of the gossip network. Some, such as Edward Eggleston, go so far as
to claim that all "journalism is organised gossip". Tabloid
journalism holds us to a rigid code of right and wrong, much more so
than the proper press. Because, while it may be more ruthless and cruel,
it honours all the established ethics of behaviour. Do not lie, cheat,
steal, or kill, or you are held to task on the pages of the tabloids.
Research on human conversation has shown that about 2/3 of gossip is
devoted to social topics, personal relations and personal problems.
A surprising finding is that only 5 per cent of gossip is negative.
While we gossip mostly about our friends and people around us, celebrities,
such as stars in film, TV, sports, royals, politicians, because they
are familiar to us through media inundation, become as close to us as
someone we know and should care about, e.g. figures like OJ Simpson,
Princess Diana, Bill Clinton -- and therefore we gossip about them.
Even in institutions of research and learning, at the headquarters of
multinational companies in their common rooms and restaurants, conversation
does not focus on matters of weight, such as politics, business or intellectual
and cultural issues. Most of these topics occupy 2- 3 per cent of conversation,
the rest is -- well -- gossip. Whatever the scientific theory, we gossip
because we enjoy it. Let's face it, gossip is fun! With all the studies
emphasising the beneficial effects of gossip however, we cannot dismiss
it as altogether harmless. The dark side of gossip is malicious, vicious
and negative directed to those who cannot defend themselves. It is distasteful,
compelling us to develop tricks of subtlety and skill appearing to be
sympathetic and charitable to the victim we are destroying. "Judge
not that ye be not judged" was not said in vain. Gossiping tends
to have a boomerang effect: "When you gossip negatively, you become
associated with the characteristics you describe, ultimately leading
these characteristics to be 'transferred' to you. You must watch out
for this "transference". There is no denying that gossip has
destroyed lives, broken hearts, wrecked homes, relations, friends and
communities. So while you can enjoy the endorphins of a gossip session,
it can curl its ugly head and bite. Remember the transference theory
and the boomerang effect. If you can't think of anything nice to say,
say nothing at all, for words can kill and so can gossip. The tongue
can manufacture poison for which there is no antidote. © Copyright
Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 28 Nov.
- 4 Dec. 2002 (Issue No. 614) Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/614/pe2.htm
In our society our pundits periodically ponder the phenomenon of celebrity-the gush of fans over their culture heroes or heroines, the gaggle of girls available to males who've attracted fame, and the voracious hunger with which we suck in superstar gossip. It doesn't matter where in society the superstars are popping up-in sports, in politics, in films, on TV, in literature, or in the intelligentsia. One way or the other, every year a flurry of columnists-superstars themselves-take on the question of superstardom and dismiss it as some form of social trash. I suspect that a new generation defines itself by its choice of superstars. In fact, I'm convinced that a new generation finds a mirror of its own emotions in those celebrities. And there's good reason why. A new generation grows up in a very different milieu than that of its parents or grandparents-especially in the post-Industrial Revolution and post-Information-Revolution Age. A new generation grows up with new technologies, new games, and a new cultural vocabulary. For example my son is growing up in a world heavily influenced by Japanese games and characters-Pokemon, Pikachu, and Yugi-oh. Those games incorporate very different rules from the games I used to play-rules that encourage growing and training your characters, rules in which instead of killing your opponents you confuse them, make them sleepy, paralyze them, poison them mildly, burn them slightly, and-the worst fate of all-the equivalent to Western games' blast and death rattle-you make them faint. Walter's games are filled with rules and characters that incorporate Chinese pictograms and Chinese concepts-love, courage, friendship, hope, miracles, destiny, and serenity. Walter's grown up with a mix of Western, Chinese, and Japanese categories with which to sort the day to day: fire, electricity, water, grass, fighting, psychic, colorless, dark, metal, rainbow, potion, full-heal, and metal in Pokemon; earth, water, and fire, wind, light, and dark in Yugi-Oh. Walter's grown up with the idea of blasting away your enemies in Spiderman and evolving your Pokemon in Pokemon. He's seen some of the tamer Japanese anime. The characters in the games he plays are playing a major role in the shaping of his mind. Now that he's twelve years old and is writing his own primitive TV scripts, Japanese names and Japanese-ish characters show up constantly. I grew up with computers that were the size of buildings. When I was thirteen and came up with the notion of a game-playing computer, it had to be built with vacuum tubes. Then came Fortran, and when I hit my 30s CPM computers that had an 8-bit, 4mhz microprocessing chip. Walter's childhood has been spent with 32 and 64-bit chips with speeds that have gone from 100 mhz I had when he was born to the 1.2 ghz laptop he has today. The games Walter plays are based on the three-dimensional effects those big chips allow full-depth interactive fantasies. Which means Walter has grown up with a form of virtual landscape I never had. We both had the virtual world created by books-that magical world you never want to leave once the plot and characters have sucked you in. But the level after level of virtual worlds Walter has traveled daily and the virtual obstacles Walter has overcome as a child are a far cry from the two-dimensional video games that I grew addicted to back in the late '70s…when I was in my 30s. As he goes into his teens, 20s, and 30s, Walter's hungers, aspirations, role models, metaphors, and modes of thought will be very different from mine. My old superstars-Einstein, Jack Kerouac, T.S. Eliot, and James Burke, may not mean a thing to him. Walter may need new stars whose souls were forged in the same generational flame that have shaped Walter's passions and confusions. He may need artists able to dig down deep into themselves and to find ways to express the very essence of who they are-artists who, in revealing themselves, express Walter's pains, Walter's questions, and Walter's fantasies. He may need new forms of art, new celebrities, new superstars, and new heroes with new messages to affirm him, to let him know he's not alone. Walter may need heroes to let him know he's part of a movement, a generation with new questions and new answers, a generation anxious to hold its head up high. Superstars help us define our selves. And a multitude of similar selves makes a new generational wave swell and rise. Howard In a message dated 1/21/2003
12:56:48 AM Eastern Standard Time, pjricherson writes: The Bill Chinnock
story is great! Joe Henrich has a great theory paper on the role of
super-experts in maintaining cultural complexity. ..\text\cultural evolution
tasmanian effect Joseph Henrich.pdf Demography and Cultural Evolution:
Why adaptive cultural processes produced maladaptive losses in Tasmania
He and Francisco Gil-White have also a nice paper on the evolution of
prestige...\text\prestige--its evolution-Joseph Henrich.pdf Both resonate
with your idea that superstars can play big role in evolution. In fact,
on Joe's model, restriction of numbers of of superstars will cause cultures
to lose complexity and that even in hunting and gathering days the requisite
number to retain the complex toolkits many of those folks had was rather
large, much larger than in any one society. The globalization of culture
is an old story! Howard In a message dated 1/19/2003 9:21:16 PM Eastern Standard Time, gberns writes: As someone who studies the unconscious, I would never underestimate what the human brain can pick up without our awareness. That said, your story of Bill Chinnock is hardly one of passive listening. As I learn more about music, I find that listening for chord progressions in a jazz piece is hard work. Of course, I didn't even know to listen for such things until I learned about their existence. Am I a more active listener? You bet, but that's only because I've invested time and energy to get to that point. By the same token, I'm missing a lot of complexity because I don't know how to listen for it. I've had similar debates with colleagues about what constitutes activity. Clearly there is a continuum of passivity to activity, which maps roughly onto what psychologists call attention. It is very difficult to quantify, but we all have some subjective notion about what constitutes active attention vs passive. It would be nice if there were a quantifiable brain signature for the degree of attention/effort, but there doesn't seem to be. G At 08:19 PM 1/19/2003, HowlBloom wrote: Let me play devil's advocate for a second. The mirror neurons make us feel as if we've actually participated in a performance we've just seen. They run us through the cerebral circuits for the muscular movements--and I suspect for the emotional components--of what we see. If we're watching a great guitarist--say Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix-- we feel a virtuosity and invention that would not have entered our brain without the not-so-passive participation of being in an audience at a concert or watching a video on tv. That virtuosity in some way ups the standards for humanity. What one person achieved as a first becomes commonplace as time goes on. Some folks watched Roger Bannister in the 1950s break the four-minute mile. Other felt it in their mirror neurons when they merely read or heard about it. Until Bannister came along, no one had beaten the four-minute limit. The generation that grew up with Bannister as a mirror-neuron model made running the mile in less than four minutes a common thing. Why? Had the human muscular system changed? Or had Roger Bannister worked out a new way of using those muscles. The team of people behind Bannister was critical to his achievements. Did he present a breakthrough in the coordination of mind, muscles, aspiration, persistence, and teamwork with other human beings? Did he present a new model others could fashion themselves upon? One way or the other, participatory viewership of Bannister's deed upgraded the capabilities of the human race. Again, the question is why. Bill, did I ever tell you the story of the guitarist Bill Chinnock? Bill grew up listening to Les Paul's records with awe. They provided his key imprinting points. As a result, when he hit his early teens, Bill got a guitar and sat next to the record player diligently attempting to reproduce Les Paul's incredible electric guitar effects. It wasn't easy. Bill toiled at if for years. When he finally mastered the Les Paul art, Bill began to make records and to play in clubs. One night, Bill was playing in a club in New Jersey. When the show was over, an elderly man who'd been sitting unnoticed at the back of the club came to the dressing room. He was in a state of awe. "How in the world did you do that?" the man asked Bill? "Do what?" said Bill. "Play that blizzard of notes all at once," said the amazed listener. So Bill told him the story of learning to play like Les Paul. "That's impossible. I never played like that," said the fan, who happened to be Les Paul. "Let me show you how I did it." So Les Paul drove Bill Chinnock to his home a few miles away and took him down to his spacious basement workroom. Les showed Bill his recording setup--Paul had invented something called multi-tracking and this was his equipment for its implementation. Then Les explained that he had played six guitar tracks, playing as fast as he could on each. Then he'd overlayed them so they sounded like a single guitar line. It had taken six Les Pauls to do what Bill Chinnock had accomplished on his own! Les Paul had set a standard--even though it was an impossible one to achieve. Bill Chinnock had absorbed that standard, wrapped his brain around it , imprinted on it, and probably had fixed it in his motor neurons. Then Bill Chinnock had achieved it. He'd achieved the impossible because of his deep passion for it--and because of his belief that a role model, a critical figure in his emotional development, a superstar--had been able to achieve it easily. Where do role models make their imprint in the brain? Where is superstar fixation...in the limbic system, the cortex, or both? Why does it upgrade the level of human achievement. Why does it move humans a notch forward in the 35,000 year advance of the collective cultural enterprise? Passive viewing or listening may be a lot less passive than we think. Howard In a message dated
1/19/2003 10:21:37 AM Eastern Standard Time writes: I think that, to
some extent, the pleasures of active musicking, concert attendance,
and listening to recordings or broadcast, are categorically different
and so not directly comparable to mutually interchangeable. I also think
that we, as a society, need to shift the mix more toward active participation
in all the arts without losing the joys of mediated participation. _____
Howard Bloom John Skoyles: Mirror neurons are sufficient to explain what goes on between a performer and their audience. Look at them whether evangelicals or Rock musicians: they create a muscular personality that into which the audience can enter. Their movements are loose and yet tight. The audience's mirror neurons are at various times shocked, relaxed but finally embody the message both verbally and nonverbally of the performer. Any stage performer does this. It requires not a mechanical body act but a microsecond feel for where the audience is -- they most present what the audience is ready to mirror. Hb: This is wonderful
thinking, John. Now how do we connect the motor neurons to the joy,
exaltation, and transcendent emotion centers--presumably the dopaminergic
structures in the striatum and a few others, like the nucleus acccumbens,
and the mossy fibers of the hippocampus with their gleeful potions of
dynorphin B? How does joy in group immersion evolve? Do groups that
have the capacity to fuse their members in emotional synchrony win out
over groups that have no such group ecstasizers? Do males who can rouse
their collective spirit to the highest pitch win battles of words or
weapons over others and thus gain access to more sex--to more women
and wombs? The success of rock stars and other group synchronizers at
gathering groupies seems to indicate that those who generate gang fusion
have the opportunity to out-impregnate all comers. Do their followers
gain similar privileges? If you're part of the in-group of a performer,
a headman, chief, or politician who excells at rousing mass passions,
do you get more women? My experience in the film and television world
and general knowledge of the sexual politics of Washington, DC, and
of Paris, where the Prime Ministers are often discovered to have more
mistresses than the press can count, say yes. Howard In a message dated 12/10/2002
9:02:27 AM Eastern Standard Time, M.Waller writes: www. johnwaller.co.uk
Mike---I just tried the URL and got some sort of "invalid address"
message. Is what I've got above correct? John's book sounds like a fascinating
rewrite of the scientific process--and perhaps of social processes in
general. In the entertainment industry, starpower is everything. The
public doesn't want naked ideas. It wants ideas embodied in iconic humans--in
superstars and celebrities. Launching one celebrity can take the efforts
of hundreds of people working diligently over the course of many years.
Yet it's important that the team be invisible and that the star seem
to have the collective powers of all those whose brains, brawn, and
creativity went into his or her creation. Why does the public need individual
stars, not collective teams? Why do even sports teams thrive or die
by the star power of their standout members? Why does it take the names
of stars to draw people to a film that combines the work of enormous
teams...often one team working on the New York shots, another working
on the shots in Australia, a third working on stunts, a fourth working
on digital and special effects, and many more besides? Why does even
the director become a star who is emblematic of the team of hundreds
behind his efforts? How has a non-human like Pixar become a star? Why
do humans identify wiith Pixar's cute little goose neck animated lamp
rather than appreciating the exquisitely coordinated mob of humans it
takes to make a Pixar film? Why does a film like Monsters Inc. rely
on the star power of a one-eyed creature named Mike? We humans orient
around our alpha figures. Tribal society probably only gave us one or
two alpha's to represent our sense of belonging and of personal identity.
Modern society gives us many alpha figures--many choices. It gives us
many groups with which to identify, and many stars who represent different
aspects of our aspirations, our miseries, and our real and fantasy lives.
But we are face-focused creatures, and we tend to get our greatest satisfactions
from digging deeply into one face at a time. We need to feed the brain's
ravenous network of social circuitry. This may explain why we're deceived
about the scientific process. I sure needed Einstein and Galileo as
my stars, my trellises to grow on. I needed their personalities far
more than I needed their discoveries. Scientific stars who steal or
conceal the credit that should go to their grad students, their colleagues,
and even, in some cases, to their rivals can be morally despicable.
But they feed our human needs. Howard But, look, when a muse takes you over you can be larger than an alpine mountain for an hour or two. And when everyone abandons you and you know it, you can be smaller than the toenail of an ant. The human spirit is enormously expandable, and equally, alas, contractable. When it comes to soul, the laws of conservation of energy can periodically appear to break. Springsteen's songs offered many a kid an instant of secular salvation--a moment of empowerment, a moment of ex stasis, a moment of self-validation. That is one of the greatest things that any religion can give. tb: abetted by Springsteen's disingenuous, churlishly scripted presentation of himself and his sound; hb: this is the author's personal opinion. Much as I dislike Springsteen's music, this seems to go over the top. Beware the trickery of words like "churlish." They take the author's private sense of loathing and try to dress it up as a rock solid something in the "objective" world. tb: and David Bowie's liturgical rock dramas were merely hype for hype's sake, hb: yes, Bowie was a product of one of the most flamboyant hype machines I've ever seen in my life. Bowie's manager was a promotional genius, and an organizer of unusual and talented people. Bowie was equally creative. He was a brain-thief. David (born David Jones) looked for strange talents flourishing just outside the spotlight of fame. He attached these gifted men or women to his entourage for six months to a year, copied their uniqueness, then discarded them. He also had the most largest, most efficient self-contained press team I've ever seen. Was there a soul at the heart of the Bowie enterprise? Though his underlings approached me several times to work with him, I never met the man and do not know. And I sometimes missed soul when it was staring me in the face. But Bowie was a master of amazement. And amazement in itself is an emotion worth cherishing. Our nucleus acumbens seems to crave it. For good evolutionary reasons. The hunger for new astonishments drives us to explore. It helps us find the treasure hidden in the newest equivalents to that ancient poison, oxygen. It helps us take the sludge of a shifting environment and turn it into ambrosia. Bowie's talent for amazement showed up onstage and in the personna he presented to his public. The real creativity--the gift for finding meaning in the splash--may have lain in the eyes and ears of the beholders. Sometimes instants of salvation aren't the responsibility of the artist, they're the task of the audience. tb: cynically manipulated by "the fake messiah with the flame red hair and the ghostly white face." Springsteen and Bowie, in particular, were traitors to rock's inherent religiousness, turning "the public image of themselves, and their music, into fetishized commodities, prefab tokens of a rapturous transcendence, producing a variety of goods that could be purchased and (for the truly idolatrous) reverently collected." hb: those goods give humans their sense of identity. We would not criticize the polished pebbles on the necklace of a Yoruban woman, though each stone has been obtained at a very high price. Each stone literally represents her gods.The necklace represents her personal pantheon. And she would not part from this string of embodied deities at any cost. Saints, gods, rockstars, politicians, baseball players, soccer heros, and cartoon favorites all give us outriggers, stanchions on which we build identity. They help us build our sense of ethics, our ways of channeling passion, our feel for our own possibilities. The objects we collect do things for us. We will never see what they accomplish if we fall for the "consumerist" bamboozle, the idea that something humans crave so badly is an artificial imposition, the false creation of a bunch of money men. Money men do not make hungers out of nothing. Money men find needs and feed them. It is up to us to read them. Entrepreneurs are like the collectors of oddities in the 17th century who filled their cabinets with strange stones. Now it's up to us geologists and paleontologists of emotion to realize that their trinkets are the teeth and bones of something we can't see--not an ancient dinosaur, but the human spirit panting to be free. Yes, Virginia, there are gods hidden in the crevasses of marketing. t: What killed rock, then, was idolatry, hb: false to the very marrow. Our idols define us--even if, as in the case of Judaism and Islam--our idols are written in words and brought to life entirely in the mind. Without a Mohammed there is no Allah. Without a Moses there is no Jehovah. And without a Buddha there is no nothingness-that's-everything. Even Vishnu and Shiva are conceived of as human beings. Religion works on the star system. And the star system is religious in its own peculiar way. Human brains are made to be connected to one thing more than any other--the faces of our fellow human beings. Our hierarchical instincts demand that we find a leader and look into his face. They demand that we look to his wisdom for guidance and for direction. That we look to his strength for our protection. And in the human case that leader is a he. If elephants, who follow female leaders, were to have a god, perhaps she'd be a she. Below, to repeat an earlier posting, are the great brain connectors that force us to focus on others for our sense of being. Those others can be wives, neighbors, or our personal pantheon of leaders--even if those leaders are, like Spiderman and Zeus, a fantasy. ---fusiform gyrus--decodes
faces We'll know more about our need to idolize and follow the lead of others when Ziad Nahas and his team finish miniaturizing fMRI. Then we can brainwatch while people interact with friends, foes, and relatives, not just while they're immoblized subjects glimpsing a picture of a face flashed on a screen. t: the sin that haunts every experience of rapturous (or even mundane) self-transcendence. Music is second only to sex as the leading "limit experience" of our age, bringing us up against the limits of human knowledge and offering access to the self-release that is part of every human encounter with God. Musical and sexual experiences are also our occasions of idolatry par excellence. The religious peak evidenced in the Beatles' "spirit‹of creativity, of play, of blissful joy"‹domesticated itself into an autoerotic, self-congratulatory maintenance of poses, having succumbed to a bland consumerism. hb: it's the consumerist error again, blocking insight in the name of anti-capitalim's idols--Foucault, Derrida, and Marx. Even these modern Godlings have their religions, complete with a socialist paradise, a lost garden of a pre-Industrial earth, and a host of Adams and Eves--Rousseau's noble savages, now known as eco-blessed indigenous peoples. Why do we worship even religions of nihilism like existentialism, post-structuralism, deconstructionism, and post-modernism? Why does youth seek the false gods of other nations, those that promise to swallow the gods of its parents whole? Why does this follow the pattern that Freud--the insightful but evolutionarily clueless prophet of psychoanalysis decreed? Why does each religion have its gods or prophets--its team of superstars. Even God Is Dead has its superhero, Nietzsche. Why? Here's a snippet from The Lucifer Principle that may explain why new gods swallow the old ones whole: "Adolescent langur males kick loose the traces of their childhood family life and cluster in unruly, threatening gangs. Then they go on the prowl, looking for some older, well-established male they can attack. The adolescents' goal: to dislodge the respectable elder from his cushy home and take over everything he owns--his power, his prestige, and his wives." Howard --------- notes . Yukimara Sugiyama, "Social Organization of Hanuman Langurs," in Stuart A. Altmann, ed., Social Communication Among Primates, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1967, reprinted by The Midway Press, 1982, pp. 230?31. Kenji Yoshiba, "Local and Intertroop Variability in Ecology and Social Behavior of Common Indian Langurs," in Phyllis C. Jay, ed., Primates: Studies in Adaptation and Variability, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1968, p. 236. Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The Abridged Edition, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980, pp. 10, 38. David P. Barash, Sociobiology and Behavior, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, New York, 1977, p. 99; David P. Barash, The Whisperings Within: Evolution and the Origin of Human Nature, Penguin Books, New York, 1979, p. 102-103. Sigmund Freud. Civilization and its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. Rock succeeded in becoming the lingua franca of youth, but at the cost of its truth. In a discussion of Marvin Gaye's "Flyin' High," Miller sums up rock's post-1977 problem in religious terms: "The song's protagonist worries about his lusts, but he's helpless to control them; earnestly seeking salvation, he's settling, one more time, for a counterfeit of transcendence." Miller concludes that "The music I once found fraught with strange, even subversive meanings now often seems to mean nothing at all. Its essential possibilities have been thoroughly explored, its limits more or less clearly established." Rock music is left with "no future." Even if Miller is right, the death of radical rock innovation does not necessarily indicate its demise as a spiritually meaningful form. Indeed, from a Catholic perspective, ornamentation, stylization, and the stability of form‹in a word, ritualization‹may aid rock in continuing to function religiously. The Catholic Mass has not necessarily forfeited its spiritual power because it has lost the degree of innovation it may have had in the early churches. We must resist the temptation to equate stylization and ritualization with a lack of religious power. If rock music has indeed had the religious power that Miller attributes to it, then the problem is deep indeed: both rock itself and religious experience may yet be open to further transformation. Or did rock's period of revelation cease with the 30th birthday of the last Baby Boomer? And yet this is the point beyond which Flowers cannot go, for to do so would risk articulating what in Christian terms would be called a theology of the Holy Spirit‹an accounting of God's presence in and through "secular" experience, whether explicitly named by the recipient as religious or not. Miller's resort to religious language to explain rock's influence (and its betrayal) is far from unusual. The employment of such metaphors is a common practice of "secular" rock writing and is, among other things, an almost palpable grasping for a language that can express the richness of experience, the claim to attention, and the sounding of human depths that rock music can and does still provide. Often these religious metaphors are deployed irreverently, as in a recent article in Spin magazine, which described a moment in the Beastie Boys' song "Sabotage," wherein bass player Adam "Yauch's fuzzed-up bass line drives you to the edge of the cliff and [rapper] Ad-Rock free-falls for all your sins." The same article asserts that in the latest album by rap-rock act Rage Against the Machine, this salvific experience takes place "about a half-dozen times."1 Rock music neither preaches nor practices a "once-saved-always-saved" doctrine. It makes no difference whether you are alone in your room in an existential crisis with headphones on; amidst 20,000 people at a concert; or simply in a car with the stereo blaring between points a and b: events of joy, generosity, and love, which Paul called the "fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:22), are often experienced through rock music as gift but yet shown to be merely momentary. At their worst, they are latched onto as idols, attempting to exhaust all that can be known of God's reign. At their best, they are accepted as promise and taste of eternal joy, generosity, and love. And so the fact that an experience of redemption must continually be appropriated and re-appropriated by rock fans, and that rock can obviously offer no decisive, final experience of salvation itself, is no charge against rock music or its religiousness. To be sure, caution is called for when confronted with rock's religious power to offer tastes of redemption; the line between a font of renewal and an addiction is a hazy one, especially given rock promoters' interest in making money from the spiritual needs of its audiences. But is the fundamental caution needed here any different in quality from the caution that any adult person of faith must exercise with respect to his or her religious institution? [snip] What is it then about rock and roll that still evokes this limit experience‹this experience so intrinsic to Christian faith in particular? What is happening when Tori Amos, in the attitude of Bernini's Teresa, straddles a piano bench, and tosses her head backward in ecstatic abandon while singing‹singing anything; when Alanis Morrisette, like some modern-day hesychast, hunches over while breathing in pace with her rapid-fire words, then stands straight up, her whole affect inward-turned and threatened to be swallowed by her huge mouth, yawning a tense tangle of vocal cords teasing the limits of orality, her arched eyebrows stretching tight over closed eyelids while her head gently swivels on her neck as if on a spring, her fingers spontaneously making odd shapes in some primitive digital rendering of the spirit of her voice; when even now on 25-year-old videotapes we see Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant, two hours into a concert, inhaling deeply with his whole body while his sweat-soaked hair swings back and forth and he turns, in real time, in slow motion, in silent cue to guitarist Jimmy Page, music having momentarily incarnated itself in his body; when Lauryn Hill redescribes the cosmic christological language of the New Testament (such as Eph. 1:23; Col. 1:17) by leading a chorus of "Everything is everything" from her rap song of the same name. Whatever is happening in each of these cases, they are not reducible to narcissism, delusion, or manipulation. It is the surrender of self-consciousness in the drama of the rock performance that leads to the heavy-breathing Amos, the hunching Morrisette, the floating Plant, the transcending Hill. And yet the self-transcendence of rock is always intermixed, in contemporary consumer capitalism, with self-absorption. The younger American generations live within a complex and widespread economy of rock, from the boombox to the Walkman, to MTV and VH1 to Rolling Stone and Spin, to concert tours, to rock radio, to MP3s on the Internet. The Catholic tradition has known for a long time that liturgy is able to communicate theologically be cause, at its best, it immerses the participant bodily in a multisensory symbol system, which then is taken by the participant out to reinterpret the wider world. Theologically, what we have in the lived experience of many young adults today is a bodily participation in a multisensory rock and roll symbol system which is a motley admixture of sin and grace‹an ambiguous liturgy not of the word but of the world. [snip] Tom Beaudoin is a Ph.D. Candidate in Religion and Education at Boston College. He is the author of Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X (Jossey-Bass, 1998). Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture Magazine. November/December 2000, Vol. 6, No. 5, Page 29 _________ That field trip taught me something else about identification with the star onstage. As long as the fan felt he was helping the star climb a difficult slope toward the peak of popularity, that fan would remain loyal. The rock star represented that fan's power to make it or break it in the public arena--to scrawl the fan's identity like grafitti via a proxy, a stand-in. But if the star became so huge that he ceased to be his fans' private property, he was in danger of plunging very fast. If all the public knew him, if all the public acclaimed him, if it seemed that others had taken him over and the star no longer needed the kid with pimples to lift him, the sense of identification went. It disappeared. Then, to show his power over what was now out of his control the fan would shift from bonding to revulsion. The fan would glory in tearing down the star that he had made. Why? Because the star no longer stood for me, he now stood up for them. Journalists worked like the fans. They played a hierarchical proxy game. The press were particularly vicious in tearing down those who had made it without their help. They ripped into bands like ZZ Top, REO Speedwagon, and Styx, groups that had become huge utterly without their aid. They tried to drive John Cougar Mellencamp out of the music biz. The rock-crit clique needed an ego-stake. They needed affirmation of their power, whether that came from building a star--as they built the J. Geils Band--or from ripping one apart. As long as they believed it was they who held Bruce Springsteen up, the rock-crit elite held on with dogged loyalty. Dave Marsh and his wife Barbara Carr, two Marxist movers and shakers within the rock-crit clique, made darned sure that feeling of being needed stayed. Marsh is a long-time leader of the rock critic establishment. After she married Marsh, his wife, Barbara Carr was hired by Springsteen to work as his publicist. Marsh, despite his Marxism, is a successful entrepreneur. He has made big money by writing Springsteen books. Springsteen has gone along with this cultivation of rock-crit loyalty. For many years he gave Dave Marsh exclusive access to the story of his life. Meanwhile, Marsh and his wife cleverly helped Springsteen play the emotions of their fellow critics, making sure it was the writers and reviewers in the leadership core who could always take the credit for Bruce's stardom, no matter how much The Boss became the public's property. Springsteen thus became a champion for a catty group of writers and for the readers who wanted to be elite by following the cues given in the media by the chosen few--the self-proclaimed rock cognescenti at The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and The LA Times. As Queen sang so accurately, "We Are The Champions." We are the tokens, the stand-ins, the outboard extensions of your personality. We are the ones who give you uplift, who give you dignity. We are the symbols of your rise, the symbols of your group's identity. So, yes, there are hierarchical things happening up the kazoo in a rock concert. But the hierarchies doing battle when Mick Jagger struts go far beyond the confines of the stadium. The stars are shouting, leaping, and triumphantly smashing instruments to show the power of those gathered in their name... to show how they can momentarily lord it over those outside the stadium who despise all that the Stones stand for. The stars are symbols of glory in the intergroup tournament--a global human game. Unfortunately that game gets very vicious when its stars are not mere rock and rollers, but are warriors like Osama and his fans. Osama is a master at the celebrity-champion, identifity-affirming game. bb: The performer or performing group is the dominant ape making the display while the audience members are the subordinates to whom the display is directed. hb: after being a key participant at hundreds of rock concerts, roaming the arenas from backstage to the stadium floor and every perspective I could find in the bleachers, every way I could discover of being with the fans and feeling what they felt, this really doesn't feel at all right to me. The audience is NOT cowed by its stars. If it were to feel that way it would never pay for a ticket. It would never come to the concert at all. bb: Establishing and maintaining that relationship calls on the brain's dominance circuitry. hb: agreed, the dominance structure is kicked into high gear by a rock concert--but not the subordinance centers of misery. Look, even in a novel we are introduced to the protagonist by seeing things through her eyes from the very first chapter. The bonding of a central character and a reader is potent stuff, but it must he handled skillfully by the author--with respect and even love for her reader's feelings. The protagonist--whether she's a member of the countryside's upper class as in Jane Austen or a criminal as in the novels of Donald Westlake--becomes the reader. Or the reader becomes the protagonist. Once that link has been established, once the literary character becomes a full-blown stand in for the emotions of the reader, the reader has to like being in that character's head. Jane Austen is a master at plucking the strings of the hierarchical instincts. But in some way her protagonist eventually has to triumph--even if it's a triumph over tragedy, as in the case of, if I remember correctly, Persuasion. Then there's what some consider the first novel, Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders. The heroine is a total scamp, a bigamist, a prostitute, and a thief. To top it all off she commits incest. So what do we, the readers get out of all of this? A feeling of superiority (that old hierarchical thing again). A trip into nearly every forbidden pleasure we've ever wanted to have. Then a neat ending in
which good ol' Moll gets the death penalty and shuffles off this mortal
coil--thus allowing us to have our cake and eat it too. We can spend
300 pages or so delighting in atrocious sin, then we can claim that
really wasn't us at all. Like the judges who sentenced Moll, we can
say that we are on the up and up, we stand for propriety. Defoe gives
our identity a neat way of escaping blame for the pleasure it's just
had. But Moll, like Jagger and Bowie, are stand-ins, they're symbols
that allow us to romp through what our instincts demand. We delight
in Moll's ability to pull off any prank--her ability to control her
destiny even in the midst of the delights of depravity. The instinct
of control is one of the two most vital we have. Feed it and you give
our perceptual system and our immune system energy. (Not to mention
the striatum and the dopaminergic skeins within the brain.) And it's
a kissing cousin of our dominance instinct. Back to Moll, who helps
us rollick most in sexuality. bb: One of the cultural conventions is
that performers and audience enter and leave the building or arena through
different doors and at different times. I take this as one of many conventions
marking this as a ritual event taking place in a social space removed
from that of ordinary life. hb: good points. One of the most important
parts of this ritual is the dimming of the lights. Darkness gives us
permission to be very different than we're forced to be in everyday
life. bb: The effect of this particular convention might be to indicate
that performers and audience are not really competitors for the same
resources and that the dominance being displayed within the concert
hall has no bearing outside the hall. hb: no, that doesn't seem quite
right either. Rock fans like to leave carrying the sense of triumph
with them. So do soccer fans, though they'll settle for defeat as long
as it gives them the right to show up and compete another day. Even
the losers in sporting competitions take their latest hierarchical dump
home with them. But if they get too many dunkings in defeat, they may
eventually switch to being fans of another team. I suspect the hierarchical
experience of a concert or a sports event is one we carry with us for
a good long time. And it's not submission, it is usually the opposite.
Howard As long as we grieve we can keep them alive in our selves, and keep our selves alive as well. Howard to a young child Margaret, are you grieving Gerard Manley Hopkins ________ << Do we need to Yes. "Lower nature" is not a scientific but rather a moral term denoting distaste for elements of ourselves which transgress social norms. I dealt with these extensively in my book _The Lucifer Principle_. When it comes to physiological reality, the "lower portions of the brain" contain numerous opposites: love and hate, divine exaltation and demonic savagery, our mystic selves and our murderous possibilities, anger, anxiety, and joy. I suspect that an argument Timothy Perper offered several months ago during a discussion of the triune brain applies here. Tim proposed that during the course of our evolution into Homo sapiens, the "animal" levels of the brain have changed. MacLean makes a good case for the numerous reptilian and early mammalian behaviors which we still share with our quadrupedal cousins. However there may, as Tim suggests, have been modifications as well. How else to explain that by undergoing phylogenetic regression (Kent Bailey's phrase), we seem to reach the divine? Bill Benzon achieves a musical orgasm, a function of the limbic system. Afro?Americans in trance state are taken over by Yoruban gods or by Jesus Christ. And writers find themselves becoming conduits for material which "writes itself." As Peter Townshend, of the Who, expressed it when attempting to convince Eric Clapton to abandon the use of heroin, a performer becomes a pipeline for a spiritual force far larger than himself, a force he channels to his audience. That pipeline, in turn, conducts the fused force of the audience back to incandesce the transcendental power which runs through the performer's heart, soul and gut. Then when the star walks offstage he finds himself empty of a larger sublimity, abandoned by the 20,000?50,000 individuals whose essence he has just contained within himself, and profoundly hollowed out. Townshend contended that Clapton was using a drug to fill the resultant painful void. I suspect that these higher forces, along with the divine exaltations which gave prophets, saints and religious founders like Gautama Buddha their voices, come from a connect between the animal brain and the higher cortical structures. Thus the "lower brain" kindles the divinity within us??our most transcendent experiences. Ironically these same
cortical structures also generate our "lower selves." Most
truths in nature contain a union of opposites. Howard Except my poor noodle
seemed to have more than just three bucking broncos in tangled harness.
So i deliberately set out to get the wild stallions in touch with each
other, in synch, in connection, in harmony. Took several years, but
it worked. Eventually i could formulate an idea _and_ express it with
words, gestures, and inflections all of which were under my control.
What's more, at the same time, influenced by william james' _varieties
of the religious experience_ and the trance states of black culture,
i made damned sure to get emotion out from under its covers and into
the equine chorale society. In performances, all these elements worked
together in a way that was far beyond any of my doing. The same impulse
which had carried me away on its own in the days of the autopilot mouth
now carried away emotion, intellect, muscles, everything, taking energy
from a source beyond me, focussing it through me, and projecting it
beyond me to the audience, who, surprise of all surprises, mirrored
it back. Ok, the bloom notes i sent you say essentially that in this
case, there was more than a rhtymic integration of my brain segments.
There was a rhythmic integration of my brain with the neuroendocrine
systems of the crowd members. Which, in fact, is what performance is
all about, achieving emotional synchrony and, in many cases, integration
in a group of human beings. Alondra oubre goes into this in her _instinct
and revelation_ by exploring the trascendent effects on the individual
of group chanting. I go into it in my essays by talking about performers
(hitler being an ace example) who could weld a crowd to the point where
its transcendence brought it in direct contact with something simultaneously
animal and "divine" (whatever divine is, but i do know from
experience that it exists??not as an outward entity but as an inner
state beyond exaltation??you, i think, know it too). That something??the
volkgeist or very soul of germany, as hitler saw it??is, according to
the bloom essays, the spirit of the collective social entity. Hitler
and others have noted this and expressed it pretty eloquently. hb So I wrote a satirical slab of doggerel, made up a slice of music to go with it, and improvised a dance. I'd done a lot of acting back then, and usually had the lead in things (Creon in Sophocles' Antigone [if you can imagine a Greek city state actually choosing to be ruled by a reject from the muppet factory, you get some idea of my interpretation of the part], Androcles in George Bernard Shaw's Androcles And The Lion [if you've never seen Shaw done with a Yiddish accent, you've really missed something], and stuff like that). But this was going to be very different, since most of it would be made up as I went along. As I was out in front of the audience dancing my head off (a pretty ridiculous spectacle, in case you've never seen it), an incredibly strange thing happened. I began to feel the energy of the audience focussing on me. Then I felt it coalescing into a single force and pulsing THROUGH me. Then came the out of body experience. Some sort of force far greater than I was seemed to take me over. I was no longer inhabiting my own body. I was merely watching, as if from the vantage point of a fly on the ceiling. I literally saw my own body jerking around below me. I saw the audience. I was particularly astonished to notice one girl who absolutely loathed the very air I breathed become utterly spellbound, her face overcome with some very strange form of awe, almost like a beatitude. As you already know, I may have been elected to all kinds of committee chairmanships in high school, but I was definitely not popular. In four years, I was never invited to a single party or informal social gathering. But when the dance was over, the strangest thing happened. The audience, a mob of over 350 people, rose to its feet like a single mass and rushed to the stage. These people who hated me lifted me to their shoulders and literally carried me out of the auditorium and up the stairs to the building housing the classrooms. Nothing like it had ever happened at Park School before during my years there??not even to the captains of winning football teams. And in my remaining years, nothing like it would ever happen again. By the way, once they
finally got me lofted into the air, my "self" had mercifully
abandoned its perch on the ceiling and returned to my brain pan where
it belonged. As Peter Townshend, of the Who, expressed it when attempting to convince Eric Clapton to abandon the use of heroin, a performer becomes a pipeline for a spiritual force far larger than himself, a force he channels to his audience. That pipeline, in turn, conducts the fused force of the audience back to incandesce the transcendental power which runs through the performer's heart, soul and gut. The performer is the extrasomatory
extension of self for the crowd offstage as well-giving his or her fans
an identity, a sense of shared belonging, a language with which to communicate,
a role model, a sense of goals, aspirations, and possibilities. When
"our" hero triumphs, so do we-as when the victories of Joe
Louis lifted the spirits of all Harlem [see-- leaders as status symbols
for the herd??or, how joe louis helped harlem rise, leaders2.cnt] or
when the winner of a World Cup in Soccer or a World Series exalts a
city or a nation in a day of glory. But should our hero fail, we too
are crushed, defeated, and assailed. Our heroes are a part of us, they
are part of the we that is me. Promoting that achievement and its meaning is equally vital. Self-promotion can sometimes be one of your most selfless acts. The more humans you can reach, the more humans you can empower. The more you can embed your message in the cultural fabric, the more likely you are to make a contribution that outlasts your brief appearance on this earth and gives a bounty to generations yet to come. Remind me to tell you the tale of how Achilles set a standard that Alexander the Great tried to equal. Alexander set a standard Julius Caeser tried to meet. And all three set a standard Napoleon tried to beat. The last in the line of this cultural twine spun by mere mortals bent on immortality was, alas, Adolph Hitler. Each of these men, in attempting to live up to the standard set by another whimpy little human who dared to extend himself beyond his limitations, created something new. Alexander created a new form of empire and left a legacy of Hellenism whose spread from Egypt to Afghanistan added a Hellenistc thread of culture that became invaluable. Caesar knit Gaul into the Roman Empire and laid the base for the languages we speak today. He also set new standards for war and for the organization of men with the extended press releases he sent back to Rome to publicize his deeds--the collection of episodic chapters now grouped together in his book The Conquest of Gaul. And Napoleon modernized Europe dramatically. Hitler, on the other hand, set new standards of evil. There was brilliance and appalling brutality in his contribution. In fact, the contribution--or damage done by evil is something I'd like to explore. Brittannica--who was the first athlete to run a mile in less than four minutes. While a student at the University of Oxford and at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, London, Bannister won British (1951, 1953-54) and Empire (1954) championships in the mile run and the European title (1954) in the 1,500-metre event. He broke the four-minute barrier with a time of 3 min 59.4 s in a dual meet at Oxford on May 6, 1954. Breaking the world record (4 min 1.3 s), held for nine years by Gunder Hägg of Sweden, was almost incidental to his successful defiance of the "psychological" barrier, the general belief in the impossibility of running a mile in less than four minutes. Bannister is said to have achieved his speed through scientific training methods and thorough research into the mechanics of running. He recounted his experiences in the book The Four Minute Mile (1955). Bannister graduated from St. Mary's in 1954, earned a medical degree from Oxford in 1963, and became a neurologist. He wrote papers on the physiology of exercise, heat illness, and neurological subjects, and from 1969 on he edited Brain's Clinical Neurology (retitled Brain and Bannister's Clinical Neurology, 7th ed., 1990). He was knighted in 1975. Search for related Internet links that use the term "Bannister, Sir Roger (Gilbert)". To cite this page: "Bannister, Sir Roger (Gilbert)" Encyclopædia Britannica Online. <http://members.eb.com/bol/topic?eu=13360&sctn=1> [Accessed 14 February 2001]. Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Howard -- warning, this may be more than you want to know! hb: Lynn, this is amazing information. Roger Bannister was a talented runner who had never fulfilled his promise. In the 1948 (date?) olympics he was a disappointment -- in fact, the whole british team was a let-down. The newspapers of the time trashed the british runners. Bannister went to medical school, and had a theory that he only had to train 30 minutes a day, and developed some protocols for that. He remained a very competitive runner and was running the mile very well, often winning races with his unusual training regimens. Banniter's strength was he could tolerate pain better than most runners. He liked to come from behind, kicking with this tolerance for pain and pushing past the better trained people. He tried several times to crash the 4:00 barrier, failing. Then he started training with Chris Brashers and Chris Chataway. Brashers (as I remember) was a sprinter, could do awesome halfs and 440s, and Eddington was a middle distance man with a great deal of stamina.They began training together with their coach, an Austrian whose name slips my mind. They aimed for 59 second 440s, with Brashers pacing the first half, and then Chataway sprinting the third 440. Then Bannister would sprint past Chataway for the final lap. The race day was miserable. It had been raining and the track was soggy. Bannister was in a real funk, and didn't want to race. But the two Chrises tried to keep his spirits up, and past noon the rain lifted. Bannister was still unhappy because the cinders were sodden and it would be hard to sprint. They went out and entered the mile. The crowd was aware that there was an attempt on the barrier, and was enthusiastic, probably helping Bannister. The plan went just as they had practiced. Brashers did his half right at 2:00, and started to fade. Bannister was behind Brashers and when he saw the fade, said, "Chris" and then Chataway pushing past and sprinting the third 440 at just over one minute. Bannister did his awesome kick, running through his pain and the final time was 3:59:4. Two other runners in the world were in competition, an Australian, Tom Landy, and an American and KU, home of tons of great runners, by the name of (can't remember his name, can find it with some research). Bannister was quite worried about them, but both of them lacked the team backing. Landy had a falling out with his coach and was training on his own, with no support. In those days, the Olympic teams had to pay their own way to the games, there was no real support. The KU runner, XX was talented and had run a race slightly over 4:00 in a mile relay event. But his coach was focused only on the relay events and discouraged him from the individual mile. He certainly could have done it. He had no support from his coach and some mindless opposition from the U.S. AAU (he had taken a camera as a prize in a race, and that made him, to the AAU, a professional). In 1954, Landy went to
Finland and trained with a team, and was there when Bannister won the
title on May 6, 1954. One of the Chrises -- I think is was Chataway
-- went over to Finland and raced Landy, and Landy beat him and took
the title away from Bannister. They raced two months later in Vancouver,
B.C., and Landy took the lead, but Bannister's kick won the day again
(Bannister had a cold at the time) and he beat Landy. Both were sub-four
miles. In the 1965, Jim Ryun (the congressman from Kansas) ran a 3:55
mile, as a high school student. While that record still stands, other
high schoolers have run sub-fours, and running is not a sport of teenagers.
It takes many years to develop the kind of platform to run sub fours.
But Bannister showed us it can be done, and the Bannister effect is
something I call the awakening that something is possible, and perhaps
I can do it. In psychology I collect stories of my own and others that
involve heroic client actions that resolve problems quickly. I once
cured a woman of bulemia in a single session. Unthinkable! Once it has
been done, we try to do it again. Can't always do it, but there is nothing
but benefit from trying. You are an inspiring guy, thanks for your powerful
words. Lynn at 54, running the mile in 10:30, but still inspired by
those who can accomplish their dreams. HowlBloom wrote: In a message
dated 2/13/01 11:18:50 PM Eastern Standard Time, ljohnson writes: that
sub-four mile is fascinating, since it was a team agreed--teamwork is
another column. if you get a chance, tell me the story of the teamwork
behind the four minute mile. h Virtually everyone in this world walks around with thoughts and feelings he thinks are his alone, feelings so strange he wonders why everyone else is so normal and he is so insane. He has strange emotions about love, jealousy, commitment, and a million other things. The role of the artist is to find those hidden feelings inside himself, reveal them, and tell ten million people that they are not, indeed, insane. They are not alone. They are part of a mass who share a common experience. Your job as an artist is the one that a guy in the 18th century took on. He decided to do something that sounded incredibly self?centered. Generally, when folks wrote biographies, they focused them on some king or general or emperor, somebody important. But this relative nobody decided to write a biography on a relative non?entity??himself. And in it, he planned to reveal every hidden emotion no one ever talked about. His biography was a big hit. It sold incredible numbers of copies and influenced entire generations. Why? Because by writing about himself, the nobody was writing about EVERYONE. Millions of people recognized themselves in his experiences, especially in the most intimate parts that no one of good taste and breeding was supposed to reveal. The man's name was Jean Jacques Rousseau. [Bill, I simplified history here and overlooked the previous autobiographies of St. Augustine and Montaigne to make a point to my rock and roll?creating listeners.] Your task as an artist
is essentially the same as Rousseau's. You owe your audience more than
just your presence on a record or on a stage. You owe them your SELF. John Mellencamp put this one best in his interpretation of the film Coolhand Luke. In the picture, the hero becomes a legend owned by his audience. His mask is stretched and enlarged to fit the group's hunger for a hero. That need is enormous. The image the group projects on Luke as a savior destroys the real, limited human being who tries his best to give hope for liberation. The group demands superhuman things of Luke, and in the end destroys him. Howard From: jfraim (John Fraim)
12/15/01 Howard, Open source is more symbolism than technology just
as celebrities are more symbolism than reality. John Fraim PS...sent
from Eric McLuhan via Lance Strate at Media Ecology program at Fordham.
--------------------- December 9, 2001 The New York Times The Open-Source
Celebrity By ADAM STERNBERGH In the June 2001 issue of Esquire magazine,
the writer Tom Junod published a profile of Michael Stipe, R.E.M.'s
front man; about half of the profile was factual and half was made up.
Junod portrayed Stipe as having said things he didn't actually say and
having done things he didn't actually do. Most commentators dismissed
this stunt as ill conceived and self-indulgent. No one recognized it
for what it truly was: a bold new idea with startling consequences for
every citizen who cares about celebrities ? which is to say, every citizen.
As Esquire's editor, David Granger, patiently explained to a Washington
Post reporter who questioned the point of the exercise, you're not thinking
big enough. And it's true. What is this big idea? Junod stated it most
succinctly on Esquire's Web site: ''Most of the descriptions and characterizations
in this story are true, even when they are not. In fact, I would venture
to say that the character of Michael Stipe exists in these fictional
accounts in a way he does not in, well, real life.'' There you have
it: celebrities, as we know them, are fictional characters. Sure, yes,
there's a real person named Michael Stipe, who says actual things and
goes to real restaurants and eats food and does other actual stuff.
But there's also a character named ''Michael Stipe'' who exists as a
kind of collectively agreed-upon fictive construct. Of course, this
character is loosely based on the real-life Michael Stipe. For example,
they look quite similar. But according to the Junod Doctrine, ''Michael
Stipe'' ? the character ? is more real than Michael Stipe the person.
Further, he exists in the public domain, like the Linux operating system.
Everyone is free to tinker at will; we can ascribe actions, ambitions,
desires and quotes to him as we see fit. He belongs to all of us. All
celebrities do. And not in an obtuse, metaphorical, ''Princess Diana
belonged to all of us'' kind of way, but in a direct, hands-on, dance-puppet-dance
kind of way. Can you see how revolutionary this is? Not only are media
outlets like ''Entertainment Tonight'' and Esquire no longer limited
to reporting the actual actions and statements of famous people, but
we, the public, are no longer forced to get celebrity information from
media outlets like ''Entertainment Tonight'' and Esquire. Now we can
get it from our own fertile minds. Sure, Salma Hayek is presenting at
the Oscars tonight, but what's ''Salma Hayek'' up to? Sleeping with
pennies on her eyes? Drew Barrymore heals the blind! 'N Sync's Joey
Fatone proves the existence of the Higgs boson particle! Bruce Willis
is coming to my birthday party! Of course, when I tell my friends that
''Bruce Willis'' is coming to my birthday party, they might think I
mean Bruce Willis, the real person, not ''Bruce Willis,'' the collectively
agreed-upon fictive construct. As such, they might conclude that I am,
in fact, a big fat liar. But they're not thinking big enough. begin:vcard
n:Fraim;John x-mozilla-html:FALSE org:The GreatHouse Company adr:;;700
Coney Court;Santa Rosa;CA;95409;USA version:2.1
hb: this relates to an
unpublished concept I've been working on for four years called extracranial
extensions of the self, or in the vernacular, the outboard extensions
of the self. We use heros, leaders, and movements to give our selves
a sense of who we are. Then we bond deeply to them. In the process we
form a subcultural group--a social cell. As that cell competes with
others, we unknowingly grow new concepts, new icons, and new social
patterns for the larger society. hve: I hope we can tape some photo's
of you from the past to illustrate this and to do some additional shooting
as well. hb: there are very few. Since I was a kamikaze working to further
others, I would not allow photographers to take pictures of myself with
the stars I worked with. hve: Do you think this is all possible September
28, or is it better to reserve some time the next day as well? hb: I've
set Sunday evening aside for you as well in case our conversation spills
over. You ask fascinating questions and have an interesting mind. How
are your other programs going? Howard
Hb: absolutely. You know
yourself and your challenges better every month. Hb: my lord, ginny. Gm: l didnt pesonally
know anymoe who died............l dream about it and want to go into
the city so badly and see ground zero before it gets cleared away.....l
need closure..
_______________________________ Hb to Russell kick 4/24/01 Russ--The Developing Mind looks extremely interesting and very useful to what we're doing. I've just hunted for it and discovered: 1) it's used as a textbook; 2) there are almost no used copies to be had; 3) it's still in print; 4) it's $40. So I'm going to hold off on buying it for a bit. Meanwhile here are some new things to chew on: I've been hunting for a connection between the Bloom extrasomatory extensions of self hypothesis and the Bloom topographic/hippocampal model of self. The topographic/hippocampal model that says we have an interior map of our social relationships and of other things we rely on--our house, our car, our savings account, our goals, etc. When we lose a job, a friend, or see an investment go down the tubes, it tears our social map apart and tosses us into a painful chaos. When the map is shredded, so is our sense of self. To regain a sense of normalcy we have to reconstruct the map--making it over so it holds together despite the lost job, the lost money, the lost goals, or the lost friend. With the map intact again, we once again have a sense of self. The extrasomatory extensions of self hypothesis says that we use other people as if they were parts of us. We run to friends for reassurance when we're hit by agitations, our excitement, and fear. We rely on our confidantes to help us explain what we're feeling, why, what we should do about it, and, more than anything, how to interpret it in a positive social context. This is a bit odd, since the emotional brain--the limbic system--is mere inches away from the frontal cortical areas that contain the consciousness we call our "selves". Why does the emotional brain need an outsider--a friend who we might call on the phone 3,000 miles away--to bridge the gap between its jangle and consciousness? Because we're parts of a collective brain. Our self evolved to help us interface with others, not to explain the agitations inside of us. By forcing us to take our experience to others for a pat on the head, a verbal hug, and for interpretation in words, our anxieties force us to disgorge our experiences into the social web--letting others know that something alarming or exciting may be in the works. The need to cough our feelings up to others in order to understand them is so deep that Alice, in Alice in Wonderland, says something we all recognize: "How can I know what I'm thinking until I hear what I have to say?" Yup. It's the old outside-the-head detour from one brain part to another showing up all over again. Now, what do these two concepts--the map of self, and the outside-the-skull add-ons of self--have to do with each other? Simple. (Yeah, sure, if it was so simple why didn't I think of it six months ago? The answer--I needed an extracranial extension of self to act as an audience so I could think it through out loud. That extension was group member Ted Coons, who visited here last week. But I digress.) The interior map the self
depends on for its peace of mind is a map of, you've got it, the extracranial
extensions of self. Our family, friends, nation, bank account, job,
car, and home are all extracranial extensions of our selves. We are
the collection of them inside our head. We feel comfortable and secure
when we know they're all where our emotional map says they're supposed
to be...when our parents and friends are supportive, our house's value
is going up, our bank account is increasing, our job ratings are high
and our chances for advancement are good, and when the car is running
smoothly. When the car conks out and shows no sign of recovery, our
boss promotes our assistant to be the vice president over our head,
our wife leaves taking all her clothes and even the kids, our parents
kick the bucket when just yesterday the doctor said they'll last forever,
and all our friends refuse to take our calls, the map is shredded and
storm tossed. Why? All of our extracranial extensions have abandoned
us. The arms, legs, ears, and other exterior organs of self have been
cut away--amputated--leaving us only with what now would seem a nothing
if it weren't in such pain--just our interior organs and that pitiful
connection point of extracranial extensions known as our own brain.
Another note. Someone pointed out a week or two ago something of enormous
value. The brain of a newborn human may seem like great stuff compared
to that of a newborn armadillo or a skink. And, indeed, it comes equipped
at birth with all sorts of neat equipment--moves that help it find and
gum a nipple it's never seen, the ability to smile and wave its arms,
lots of baby things. But its level of development is too primitive to
allow for something we take very seriously as human beings. It doesn't
have enough equipment to give it consciousness. It takes nearly four
years of growth--9 months in the womb and another three or four years
outside of it--before the brain is large enough, complex enough, or
whatever (frankly, we're not sure) before the brain finally has what
it takes to think and be aware. What is it those four years put together
that makes the conscious self spring into life? If ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny, what can this tell us about our birthright as hominids who
climbed down from the family tree? If only we could find out, we might
have a handle on consciousness' neurobiology. Are you familiar with
the work of Daneil Siegel, particularly his book The Developing Mind?
Looks like he's on the "self is others, others are self" path,
too. Below are some interesting quotes from a review of the book. Full
review is at <http://www.unhooked.com/booktalk/developing_mind.htm>:
_______________________________ _______________________________ In a message dated 11/25/00 12:41:27 AM Eastern Standard Time, merc1 writes: I have managed to get
my laundry done (8 or 9 loads) and am getting some hb: frankly, I'm rooting for her and hoping that she becomes your current girlfriend again. Having the foundation of couplehood is enormously important. it frees you to pursue important goals. actually, it's sort of Maslowian--it fills a crucial need and hence gives you a base from which to pursue goals which seem more important, but which, in reality, aren't. I'm in love--something which is teaching me a great deal about the practical application of all the theoretical material. But it takes time--well worth it when you consider that if I'm lucky and couple with the object of my affection (she's a person, not an object), it will give color, tone, and much more to the rest of my days as a container of innumerables selves, many of which are trying to figure each other out. Howard _______________________________ js: The loadstone of heart orientates to the magnet in them, that exists for us, because, their loadstone orientates in our way. We mutually magnetise each other, and so attract: we share magnetic lines of force along which we seek to share and partner our lives. hb: and these invisible lines are the third self--the self made of the consonance of me with her or you with the person you love--the common beat played by no member of the duo yet summoned in the spaces between their rhythms--the doubled peaks of emotion, the troughs where negative emotions and thoughts add to each other's dip into the void, and those strange spaces in which her up and my down cancel each other out, producing a syncopated us. js: And this orientation is non-shareable outside this bond. hb: someone said yesterday that every time you become involved with a new lover you have to learn love all over again. every relationship is radically different from those which came before and those--if we are unfortunate enough to fail in pairing for life--which come after. js: I read somewhere of a questionnaire about love and friendship - all the responses for love and good friendship were the same except for the killer question. 'Do you feel jealously?' Good friendship allows others into the game of enjoying our mate: love asks that it is unique. hb: actually, friends get very jealous of newcomers who threaten to occupy the attention of the person on whom they depend for friendship. The outsider poses a danger. He or she can snip the extrasomatic bonds of self provided by a best friend. That's one major source of tension in a new relationship. The person we love talks about us to his or her friends. The gossipy friends tend to say negative things about us, thinking they are offering caring evaluations. They aren't. They are mate-guarding their friend, trying to keep him or her from establishing a new tie which may cut the old ones...specifically the ones with them. js: What kind of orientation underlies this? An orientation is a safety device. If you wake not knowing up and down, you are in trouble. From where do put your feet, to where water might rush and drown you. Without orientation, you are paralysed, totally lost, confused and helpless. With friendship, we find a orientation that is not exclusive, we share identities and fun - others can enter and leave. Here we focus social orientations about who we are that we can freely open and swap. But the really deep emotions of security are kept private. There are some orientations that must be closed, ones less centred on fun than vulnerability and exposure. hb: key words in the world of love--vulnerability and exposure. js: We are loyal to friends but we do not dream dying for them to prove our friendship. It is about fun nothing too serious. But the orientation is deeper with love: we know we would sacrifice our all for them. Without them, our sense of self, hardly exists. They provide the orientation space in which we find a haven for our fears and anxieties. Shared beyond us, we become aware of them, merely because when not shared, they are not so vulnerable to loss. What if they die? What if they misunderstand a joke and take unintended offence? Their happiness becomes a measure of our own. It becomes that measure. hb: another thing I've been trying to explain to friends. It is my job to make a person I love happy. But it's not a burden--by making her happy I make myself happy as well. It's only when she's happy that I, too, can enjoy life fully. js: Are we wise to love? Yes. Love is like a playframe which the child inside us explores a world beyond itself. We can give up - at least for moments when in their presence - the narrow topography of ourselves, and experience things within a new one - that shared with them. But the price is vigilance: that new topography has not only given our limbic system new bearings but ones beyond our control. We must watch out. That is why love and trust are part and parcel of each other. And why emotions so easy flip up and down. We have abandoned the gravity of our person ego. We now have to orientation our emotions through our love. It is a gain, that is also a lost of former anchorage. hb: if the map of self and reality which gives us our identity is located primarily in the hippocampus, it isn't surprising that our love is tested often by the alarm systems of the nearby amygdala--which go into innumerable panics over the many ways in which we can lose our lover and be rejected by him/her.
In a message dated 11/25/00 4:13:44 PM Eastern Standard Time, MacHamlet writes:
Kitten-I just got off the phone with you and Family Car Service is on its way to pick you up and all hell is breaking loose in my soul--good hell, I hope, but I am losing control and nearly crying out for you. The sounds come out, but they are muffled, fortunately. But my breath is ragged as can be. I need you so deeply--so much more deeply than the verbal me can even understand. I'll eat as quickly as possible and put a movie on the tv, but will cut it off when we put you to sleep, which we will try to do immediately. Kit, I am so glad you love me. So very, very glad. me
_______________________________ ....I am hb: very strange, given the justifiable anti-Skinnerian backlash. Skinner and I did not get along personally, however I am extremely frustrated that his programmed learning techniques--with which I did some research--aren't being widely applied. They'd solve a lot of our educational problems. Ll: and hope to develop
computer software hb: given that the best way to fish an individual out of depression is to give him/her a sense of control and a sense of social connection, Skinner's programmed learning techniques fit right in. Each learning step is written, pre-tested, and refined until it is guaranteed to give a sense of achievement to almost every human who tries it. It's particularly helpful with material which requires memorization. In other words it boosts the sense of control and accomplishment tremendously. Teaching social skills and integrating a patient into a social group is probably a bit harder to acheive with Skinnerian methods. What aspects of Skinner's work interest you?
Sorry for the utter rudeness, and worse for not being there when you've needed me. My sickness has gotten even worse than it was a few days ago. I've awakened so I can eat a meal (breakfast???? at 5:30 pm????, where are my eggs and bacon and Cheerios?????) and go back to sleep. Then I've gotta wake up one way or the other by eleven tonight so I can do a radio interview. The key to not getting
into these dire situations with Bill is to keep your eye peeled for
a cue like the Verazanno Narrows Bridge you can use to stop fights before
they start. Marie, I hate to tell you this, but fighting comes too easily
to you. I've known it for many months, but haven't known what to do
about it, so have kept my mouth shut. On the other hand, fights make
Bill angry. Viet Nam taught Bill that if he's angry he should calm himself
down by shooting a few gooks. So Bill's anger scares him even more than
anger scares the rest of us men. He goes into isolation to protect himelf,
hates himself for the fury bottled up inside himself and for his impulse
to mangle, mutilate, and kill, then goes suicidal. Answer--don't bottle
up legitimate complaints, but figure out how to stop yourself before
your fight-mode takes over. Then find a more gentle way to separate
important disagreements from trivial ones and to discuss important issues
with tact, diplomacy, self-restraint and charm. All that's a tall order.
It is damnably difficult to pull off. But it's also necessary. Howard hb: nah--it's much easier to make love and to love in general once you've grown up, gotten over a lot of early insecurities, and have learned a bunch of things about life. teens and people in their twenties have problems with love that make ours look trivial by comparison. love--Howard _______________________________ Just add love and empathy to her sense of others' in and outs and the world would change for her. she'd receive affection instead of abhorrence. people would adore her and find her indispensable--and that includes the teachers who tossed her out of school a few weeks ago before school had even officially begun. >I want to control my site. I love to design. >I love to learn new things. I love it when you teach me about things like frames. You've inspired me to want to put gifs that dance and dwingle on my >site. You've inflamed my desire to have microbes moving and building stromatolites, microbial colonies morphing as they learn to take on their >invaders and turn them into useful workers (organelles), then the trasmogrification of fractal colonies of eukaryotes into fruiting bodies, >seaweed films, swimming squadrons of protozoans, ediacaran assemblages that look more like alien spaceships made of jelly swimming through the seas, >trilobites engaged in orgies, my late friend Kerry Clark's preCambrian critters with the huge eyes scouring the seas like flotillas of Star Wars >battle cruisers, early crustaceans confronting each other in sumo matches to determine who's boss, plants coming to land, the first scorpion-like >crustaceans making it to the shore, insects arriving to eat the plants, plants evolving seduction mechanisms (flowers) to entice the insects into >acting as pollen-carrying UPS women, etc. AB: Whoa! You're going to have to talk with Richard about that. hb: see note to Richard. >I want to put up lots more of my >photos in their own gallery areas. I want a jump from the navigation bar to Planet Bloom, which is a rather bizarre place. AB: "Planet Bloom, which is a rather bizarre place" is a great tagline. hb: how about--"Planet Bloom, welcome to the bizarre" >And I want a jump from the >navigation bar to another table of contents page jumping to a bunch of my writings. Why the writings? Because you're right. The more essays, >articles, and papers there are, the more folks will be directed to the site >by search engines. hb: note how I followed your suggestions and attempted to engage sara in the process, to recognize her importance, as much as possible. AB: And also because you have many interesting things to say - the "Infinity Factory" shows you did with Richard are some of the most requested we have had - even more significant because you may not immediately spring to mind in the "Aleister Crowley/Chaos Magick/ Apocalypse Culture" mindset. hb: that's always puzzled me. Alex, why am I popular with this crowd? >Down at the bottom of each page I've gotta have a >hyperlink back to home, so folks who land in the middle of an article can end up exploring the site--and hopefully buying Global Brain and Lucifer >Principle. But I like to design myself--it's a pleasure for me, a break from writing, and an art that's necessary to my, I dunno, soul. AB: She's handing this back to you. >We clash, kiddo. I create pain in you. I frustrate you. Whatever my signals are intended to be, your emotions can't help reading them as some >form of supreme tyranny or monstrous stubborness or something equally horrid and harmful. It's not your fault or mine. These things happen sometimes. AB: Sara sees them as being endemic to the "New Culture" and particularly Gen Y. hb: tell me more about the New Culture and Generation Y. And also within herself - as tree-rings that cannot be changed. This misperception leads to suicide: if you can't change the map, and you deny the possibility of changing the mapmaker, and you can't endure fatalism, then you burn out. hb: the problem is that she CAN change. the change in her way of presenting herself to me over the last few months has been remarkable. it's just that this darned illness makes it hard for me to stick with sara in a way that would help her. these collapses put me way, way behind. >Don't force yourself to endure more of my poison. I don't try to be toxic...just the opposite. But toxicity is in the mechanism of perception, not the intention. And the perceptual apparatus is something you can't help, >nor can I. Lemme read Alex's words of wisdom before I write anymore. AB: Your comments about the perceptual apparatus are important. Sufism has a metaphor of shining a mirror to change the warps of perception. Which is something you did using sexuality. _______________________________ Euterpe L: yes Howl Bloom:
unnecessary Howl Bloom: unneeded Howl Bloom: missing all the elements
listed at the beginning of our conversation Howl Bloom: structure, purpose,
human contact Euterpe L: it is putting a huge crimp in my social life,
but I am not offering to let him sleep in computer room Howl Bloom:
good Euterpe L: I felt really Howl Bloom: bad for your father but good
for you Euterpe L: bad when it Euterpe L: got cold but I can't let myself
get dragged into this again Howl Bloom: oi Euterpe L: Jessica's house
isn't going to be ready until Dec and he is planning on movingin withher
Howl Bloom: how does one get him hooked back into society? Howl Bloom:
is Jessica willing to have him? Euterpe L: I don't think that's possible
until he roots himself somewhere Euterpe L: Jessica said she is, but
she hasn't lived withhim yet Howl Bloom: like Jessica's, let's hopeEuterpe
L: the first night he was here he spit his lugers in the sink. It disgusts
me Howl Bloom: hmmmmm, once he's settled maybe he can do a volunteer
job of some sort Howl Bloom: lugers? Howl Bloom: german guns? Euterpe
L: He will not like Jessica's He will not get along withthem. phlegm
Howl Bloom: oi Euterpe L: phlegm = lugers Howl Bloom: I should go do
a bit of work Howl Bloom: I'm way, way behind Euterpe L: ok I just want
ed to see how you were Howl Bloom: and very tired Howl Bloom: yukky
LOL Euterpe L: I met an interesting Israeli online Howl Bloom: I'm glad
you're busy,though Howl Bloom: aha Howl Bloom: male? Euterpe L: of course
Howl Bloom: we should talk about it at another time Howl Bloom: I really
have huge pressures on me now Euterpe L: yes, ok good night if you need
me just call Howl Bloom: thanks, Lor, g'night hb: more smiles and hugs. I FEEL LIKE WE ARE MARRIED........WITHOUT THE BS............. I HOPE YOU FIND SOMEONE ELSE...ITS A HARD THING TO FIND I'M SURE..........BUT I MUST SAY I TOLD YOU SO.........YOU SHOULD HAVE HIRED ONE OF THE PREVIOUS OLDER WOMAN WHO CAME THE LAST TIME YOU INTERVIEWED........I TOLD YOU THE YOUNG ONE WASNT A GOOD IDEA......BUT YA DIDNT LISTEN NOW, DID YOU ? hb: actually everyone else said no. this was my last chance--no choices, alas. YOU THOUGHT WITH YOUR DICK AND YOUR MACHOISM......DO NOT SAY NO......SHE WAS A KINDA ORNAMENT.......DONT TELL ME......YOU MEN ARE ALL SWINES.. hb: swine, yes. and she was ornamental. but for some reason deep inside she set something negative off in me. perhaps it was a warning. as for sexual attraction, never in a million years. With you, yes. with her, no. :-)~~~~~~ I AM GLAD THAT WE CAN AT LEAST CORRESPOND THRU E-MAIL.......I WILL TRY TO CALL WHEN I CAN......... STAY WELL HOWARD......AND HAVE NO FEAR......YOU WILL FIND A CARETAKER....JUST DONT THINK WITH YOUR DICK THIS TIME.........AND I FORBID YOU TO HIRE ANYONE WITHOUT FIRST GIVING ME THE STATS ON HER.......OK ? OTHERWISE, I DONT WANT TO HEAR WHEN IT DOESNT WORK OUT........GET IT ???????!!!!!!!! hb: this one is 27 years old. I think she has talent and character. She's Israeli (I pray there's still an Israel next week, next year, and next century), hasn't found what she wants to do in life, though she's been designing clothing and selling it at street stalls. She's used me as a mentor to give her an anchor when things have gotten rocky for her emotionally. I like doing that, as you know. She seems very honest, prone to depressions sometimes, very strong despite her worries, and is another person I'm not attracted to sexually. I have the feeling that she will gladly pitch in to help me in any way she can. however I tend to be overly optimistic about these things. _______________________________ _______________________________ Bloomian philosophy rings true once again as this week I'm in a fantastic mood. Why? Well, I turned in a script that was apparently really good and I've received many a pat on the back (and even a jealous snarl from one coworker) for being the "golden boy" this week. We'll see how it flies with the executives from here, but I'm feeling pretty good to have actually finished something and then received accolades for it. Otherwise, things are fine. I have to do some moonlighting in the form of writing some comedy shorts for the Sheep oriented cartoon I used to draw storyboards for, so that will be a little extra cash, which is always good, especially when one has to pay for minor repairs to a BMW, like I just did. Really have to get hopping on my next Monkeysuit story, too, but I've still got some stylistic research to do on that one. Nothing else to report. I suppose next time you hear from me I'll be waist deep in the hell that is the writing process, but for now I've got some free time and a case of the happies. Now to find a girlfriend while I'm still emitting the woman luring, musky scent of victory ..... Chris _______________________________ In a message dated 10/13/00 6:38:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Mileting writes: hb: oi. hb: send her here. i love
animals. I HOPE YOU ARE FEELING OK.....THANKS FOR THE OTHER DAY............ hb: found someon to come
and take care of me and am being taken care of by someone who fills
the place with her personality in a pleasant way until the permanent
one moves in. no sex. Rozzie has been sick for nearly a month and hasn't
been able to get out here for a visit. meanwhile have been helping two
suicdal friends and one who needs to be committed for her own safety.
plus pushing my new book--did the Gary Null Show a few days ago and
it looks like I'll do it again soon, so we shall see. hb: i love it when you are an angel on earth, kiddo. ..SHE IS DOING OK....I
AM SEEING HER TODAY............. hb: WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hb: hmmm, not coming in time--so many potential jokes, so much self censorship to avoid wreaking havoc with bill... ....I HOPE I CAN KEEP UP WITH ALL THE TOURING.........MY WALKING IS NOT THAT GREAT.......BILL TOLD ME HE IS GOING TO BUILD UP MY ENDURANCE........HA.......HOW DO YOU THINK HE IS GOING TO DO THAT ?????? hb: LOL ")
hb: something's happening which may produce distress but also may be good for her. sara has no parent giving her structure. she has become self indulgent to the point of literal self destruction. i've sat on the phone with her for hours when her wrists were slit and she'd attempted to od on qualudes--not once, but several times. she needs self discipline and she's imposing it on herself in her dealings with me. SHE is imposing it to fit in with my legitimate needs. frankly, what she did to my website was atrocious. it in no way represents me, my ideas, or my aesthetic. i've designed a whole new site, and sara has agreed to technically deglitch it for me. she's done this voluntarily, and though it may be painful, she's sticking with it. i'm very proud of her. she NEEDS badly to be able to work with other people, live with other people, and to love other people so that she can get love from them--love she deserves. i watched her trash her boyfriend, reduce him to a blithering idiot, and send a person who wanted achingly to love her out of her life. qualudes, suicide attempts, the destruction of any who want to help or love her--alex, these are the elements of her soul she is losing yes, she needs an independent, vigorous, and thriving identity. but not one that is constantly killing the person--a very, very good person--in whom it resides. she may come out of this hating me. but she will come out of it with abilities to nourish herself emotionally and to gain attention for her talents and her internal lovableness instead of for the havoc she wreaks. i am damned serious about this. to date, her greatest pleasures have come from what she calls "causing trouble"--getting teachers fired, being banished from school before the school year even begins, etc. she gets enormous pleasure from these things, then hates herself for having done them. her brain, her soul, her emotions, all are at war with each other. if she continues to show the willpower she is now demonstrating, she'll gain enormously. it's not self-restraint i've requested, it's a self-restraint she has decided she must exert. why? because, despite herself she loves me as much as i love her. she sees me as the one who is destroying himself, and she is out to save me. bless her. in the process she will save herself, and we both will have saved each other. salvation can be painful. first comes purification, wrenching the demons around so they show their angelic sides. that is what sara, without schooling or prompting, is doing. i am so proud of her, alex, so god damned fucking proud. i love her enormously. _______________________________ Howl Bloom: and I will in turn hand over the keys and all the registration plates which allow you to also possess me MacHamlet: ??? Howl Bloom: ummmmmmm, Case, I can never predict when I'm going to be awake Howl Bloom: however everyone here now has clear orders to put any call at any time from you Howl Bloom: through to me no matter now Howl Bloom: sleepingly snoringly groggily snogging I might be MacHamlet: Hmmnn...yes, I understand. Well, I will just keep trying at irregular intervals during the day Howl Bloom: how Howl Bloom: LOL Howl Bloom: and, oh, by the way MacHamlet: Yes Howl Bloom: did I tell you that MacHamlet: No Howl Bloom: I LOOOOOOOOVE YOU? Howl Bloom: yes, I thought I forgot to mention that MacHamlet: Yes. How are you able to work at all? Howl Bloom: i work incessantly Howl Bloom: god damn am i missing you MacHamlet: I am being bratty...sorry...spirte behavior Howl Bloom: do you know what it's like to see the glow of your cheek MacHamlet: The flush Howl Bloom: next to my eye while my cheek is on yours? Howl Bloom: yes Howl Bloom: oh, what a wonderful flush MacHamlet: You are such a smoothy Howl Bloom: and to hear your voice Howl Bloom: your little girl Howl Bloom: molding herself into me MacHamlet: Whimper Howl Bloom: it is astonishing, case Howl Bloom: astonishing MacHamlet: yes I agree Howl Bloom: beyond beleif MacHamlet: yes I concur Howl Bloom: another thing MacHamlet: and that would be? Howl Bloom: I love it that you love being impish and telling me you outdid me at school Howl Bloom: I love it when you love doing something MacHamlet: Yes, well that is all that i can come up with..yet. Howl Bloom: including when you do something you love so well it awes me MacHamlet: I do love what I do Howl Bloom: oh, lord, is my competetive self going to have to bury itself in the muck and hide beneath the bog Howl Bloom: in utter humiliation? MacHamlet: I am a lucky princess Howl Bloom: yes, yes, yes, you are MacHamlet: I think so Howl Bloom: which makes me triply quadruply lucky Howl Bloom: to have you Howl Bloom: if have you I do Howl Bloom: case the insecurities of being in love are insane Howl Bloom: do you know how I got through them today? Howl Bloom: this morning my friend Marie called MacHamlet: I know.....I will tell you to stop it if you get out of hand Howl Bloom: I am the godfather and gaurdian angel to her relationship Howl Bloom: with her Bill Howl Bloom: she was having an insecurity attack Howl Bloom: attack MacHamlet: yes, the one you told me about MacHamlet: NO FUN Howl Bloom: so I tol her it's just a normal part of the reality of love MacHamlet: Yes..... Howl Bloom: and reminded her of how very very far we've come Howl Bloom: in the last six months Howl Bloom: and how each attack of insecurity Howl Bloom: only brings them another step closer to each other in the end Howl Bloom: then Anat had her anxiety attack in the middle of her new love MacHamlet: Sure as long as communication stays wide open Howl Bloom: and she got the same message in slightly different form Howl Bloom: well negotiating the communication is where I come in as copilot MacHamlet: Oh it is hard...but worth it Howl Bloom: CASE I AM SO FRIGGIN GLAD YOU FEEL THAT WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Howl Bloom: so there I was Howl Bloom: in the midst of my case insecurity panics and all MacHamlet: Yes, well, anything worthy takes work Howl Bloom: and it suddenly hit me MacHamlet: Like a ____ Howl Bloom: to give myself the same advice I'd been dishing out so liberally Howl Bloom: and it helped, not as much as seeing you would have helped, but still Howl Bloom: it was worth a little something Howl Bloom: so my left hand gave my right hand a bill for the therapy MacHamlet: Yes..it helps to listen to yourself. Howl Bloom: $125 for 45 minutes MacHamlet: That sounds about right. Howl Bloom: and I walked out of my body and onto the streets an only moderately insecure but wildly in love man missing Howl Bloom: missing MacHamlet: My typing is keeping my pal awake..I need to sign ff..I will call you tomorrow.........miss you Howl Bloom: missing his pixie bride MacHamlet: that was supposed to be sign off Howl Bloom: i love you little snorf {{***}}} Howl Bloom: night, I miss you, but MacHamlet: Snorf? Howl Bloom: ahem Howl Bloom: tomorrow you have to tell me how you handle these insecurities, or if you have them at all MacHamlet: Please be okay about all of this...I long tobe beside you so there...think on that Howl Bloom: yes, snorf, I love neologizing Howl Bloom: ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, case MacHamlet: Okay babe, talk to you in the am Howl Bloom: you made me feel so good Howl Bloom: and gave me an erection Howl Bloom: night princess pussykins MacHamlet: Bad flirty boy... Howl Bloom: LOL MacHamlet: Good night Howl Bloom: night, tiny one Marie-- another thing I'm proud of. your level of insecurity has gone down tremendously...or so it seemed. i may have been so twizzled by waiting for my love to call that i didn't give your voice a chance to relax and tell me what you were feeling. but i think you're getting your feet in the rocking boat of the bill relationship. now a favor--pray for me and the woman i love marie. pray for us very, very hard. i want to marry her, ginny. we have a long way to go to get that far, but by god, i want to marry her. and i want us to be happy so that our marriage lasts until the day i die. so your atheist needs every hope you can offer up to heaven. love--howard _______________________________ THINGS ARE GREAT WITH BILL.......AGAIN.....SO DONT WORRY...........HOPE THINGS ARE OK WITH YOU AND YOUR NEW LOVE........... I AM LEAVING IN ANOTHER HOUR.....I AM SO EXCITED......THIS IS A DREAM COME TRUE......I CAN STILL REMEMBER THE ACHING I USE TO GET WHENEVER HE WENT AWAY IN THE PAST.......I ALWAYS IMAGINED BEING THERE WITH HIM...........AND NOW.......COOL , HUH ? SO ITS NOT TRUE THAT YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR........ITS GREAT !!!!!!! TAKE CARE LOVEY......I WILL CONTACT YOU WHEN I GET BACK........ LOVE YOU....... GINNY looking within may provide one of the best tools for seeing what's outside of us. Empathy can carry us into the mind and emotion-the soul-of others. But to feel the other in us, we have to find where he or she resides. He have to discover the nook of our own personality, of our own experience, in which his mirror image resides. We have to find the memories of those times when we have felt what he or she feels deep inside. hb empathy and reading others--their
nonverbal languages-read bodies, breathing, and the melodies of voices
(prosody), not just words.
_______________________________ Alas, I haven't been recording the conversations in which this stuff has been going on. Too bad, since new ways of linking the ideas have been coming thick and fast. My guess is that I'll finish howardbloom.net by the end of January and will then be far freer to plunge into The Biopsychology of Getting A Grip. Meanwhile, how is your grip of the material coming along? Did you get my message explaining that the file attachments you sent a while back came through in some computer code which word 2000 couldn't decipher? Actually, I'm behind two or three weeks in my email, so you may have sent me the equivalent of War and Peace by now and I may have missed it. I'll be able to dedicate more attention to The Biopsychology of Getting A Grip in February, I promise it. How does that fit into your schedule? By the way, a friend from the New York Times came up with a great way to package some of these ideas last night. Great and very fitting to the material,. but not necesarily something I should do. The notion is to write a book on twelve ways to heal the human soul. It would incorporate practical applications of the theory of self plus ways of soul spelunking I worked out back in my record industry days. Those methods of finding the deepest levels of self and exposing them to consciousness were very effective in helping people like Prince and John Mellencamp become enduring artists whose life produces a message that helps set both themselves and others free. I wish you could come over some evening so we could toss ideas like this around. Any chance that you'll get to NYC in the foreseeable future? Hang on--one more thing. This is a brief summary of what David Berreby (the the NYTimes) and I were brainstorming about last night. See if you can make head or tails of it: "All the concepts I've been working on over the last month or so came together with others I've been developing since I was sixteen years old and the ideas became a greater whole tonight because of David (Berreby--of the New York Times)'s effect in looping his end ot the thread back to me, reflecting me to myself while I in some way mirrored and completed him. The extrasomatic extensions of self connected with the Bloom toroidal theory of the birth, maturation, death, and rebirth of the universe. I came up with that cosmological theory at the age of 16, and daft as it sounds, it has been validated bit by bit by astronomical observations over the last few years. Strangely, it fits with the theory of self and with the reason kings were able to put together nation states and loose bundles of battlers were able to operate as superorganisms, swallowing rivals even as they fought each other. David and I reached hard for a name that would describe competitive synergy--the relationship which allowed the interlocked yet squabbling states of the West to conquer the homogenized, torpid empires of the East and which allowed the squabbling substates of dar el Islam to catch and keep vast swatches of continents forbidden to the world of Christendom. The soul, the self, the growth of love, the rise of kingdoms, the instincts of justice we inherit from lower primates, the cooperative bickering which puts loose empires into overdrive, and the birth, flowering, growth and eventual end of the cosmos--we put it all together. Everything works in loops. Doughnuts (toroids) are the key. Oh lord, I'm babbling. But it's all true." Now, finally, on to a reply to what's below: In a message dated 12/12/00 12:03:45 PM Eastern Standard Time, russ writes:
hb: Judith is one of several who came up with this notion. Jerome Kagan began voicing it nearly 20 years ago and wrote a book about it perhaps ten or fifteen years ago. The notion has quite a bit of validity. We shape our childhood and mold our parents, then get what we've generated and think that we're its victim, not its creator. On the other hand, the medium we're sculpting--our parents' response to us--is limited in the forms it can take. Parents have potent personalities just like babies do. Plus, parents can be at least a bit conscious of the choices they make and have a bit more freedom than infants or toddlers to stop themselves when they're doing something damaging or loony. Finally, kids and parents share the same genes, so it's hard to tell where the interaction of a kid and his parents stops and common genetic predispositions begins. I haven't read Rich's book, but, as you can see, I've absorbed some of its arguments--and even more of Kagan's. She builds an incredibly
convincing case that parents have basically no effect hb: hmm, it seems my unbounded arrogance is unfounded. this is a rather key element of her argument and I seem to have forgotten it. Quick, quick, where are my anti-Alzheimers pills? She makes the exact same
point you made below as applied to humans. She looks at studies of hb: same deal with Harlow's chimps. Here's what it boils down to in terms of the Bloom theories of self--other humans are our oxygen. Without them we choke and die. We find ourselves reflected in the eyes of others. Without the mirror of those eyes we shrivel and lose our selves dramatically. Finding ourselves is a matter of discovering the others with whom we are most comfortable, with whom we can bond, who will love us as much as we love them, who will allow us to play a vital role in their lives, and who will compensate us with money, stature, or just plain gratitude and hugs for doing what we do for them. We have to find a social group--a subculture or a bunch of them--that give us meaning, a worldview, a sense of purpose, and people we can be among. In fact, both Japanese and American culture allow several ways of finding your self. First, you are of the family and the circumstance from which you came. Second, you are the person who has discovered his or her identity through his work. Third, you have a "hobby" self--a self that lets you make a personal statement about yourself. In Japan you can pick from about ten hobbies. Each one allies you with a different leisure group (as opposed to the workteam you're a part of during the day). Each one makes some statement about your individuality. However the number of "individual" statements one can make is severely limited. Ten is a good deal less than an infinity. The result is that when you are at a Japanese party and meet a stranger, first each of you feels out which company the other works for. Then you exchange cards to indicate what level of the corporate hierarchy you've reached. This takes care of your equivalent of a business suit--it pigeon-holes your working self. Next you ask each other what your hobbies are. This tells more about your "innate personality." It identifies you with a subculture you chose with a tad bit more freedom than you had when you picked your employer. Actually your work-self may be more of a mandatory thing than your hobby-self because you didn't pick your employer, your employer picked you. You had zero degree of choice about which family you came from, a small amount of choice over which company you work for, and the greatest choice of all over your hobby. Identities are pigeon-holed here in America in much the same way. Read any article you want in Time Magazine and see how non-celebrities are identified. "George Santoros, a 48-year-old brickmaker from Blocksville, Ohio, was astonished to see a live eel wriggling between the buns of the Big Mac he purchased at a MacDonalds three blocks from his home." OK, this is the standard who, what, when, where, and why format of journalism. The interesting part is the who process. First comes the guy's name, which identifies his familyl. If it's a name like Antonio Caravelli, we think the guy might be connected with the mafia. If it's a name like Irving Shebshelovitz, we think it's some goofball with a funny Eastern-European accent and a definitely marginal social position. If it's Holden Caulfield or Peter Rockefeller, we think it's someone from an upscale wasp family. Next comes the guys age, which identifies what anthropologists call the guy's cohort--and gives a sense of how rebellious or stodgy he might be. A 48-year-old is likely to be married, have kids, and either rent or own a livingspace of some sort. If he doesn't, there'll often be a clue: "George Santoros, a 48-year-old brickmaker from Blocksville, Ohio, was astonished to see a live eel wriggling between the buns of the Big Mac he purchased at a MacDonalds three blocks from his home. Santoros, a homeless bachelor...." Or "Santoros, the father of five, decided to introduce the eel to his wife." A fifteen year old is likely to be a bit more rebellious and prefer skooters or skateboards to Hondas and housing. Then comes the guy's profession, which pinpoints his social position even more. Further along in the description will come some clue to to the small elements of decoration or affiliation which reflect the most personal choice, and hence the most individualistic aspects of self. "Santoros goggled at the miniature sea monster through his swept back Ray-Bans and said, 'Man, this is not what I had in mind when I asked for extra secret sauce.'" It's sort of like wearing a suit and tie. The suit has to be within a narrow range of cuts and colors to look acceptable. In point of fact, its styling is so mandatory that one western men's suit looks basically just like any other, whether you're wearing it to work in Germany, Japan, or the United States. You make your statement about your individuality with your elective--your tie. Even then, the choice is far more limited than it seems. You may have 30 designer ties in your closet, but all of them are cut to an almost identical pattern, and almost all are variations on a tiny handful of fabric designs. Yet both the suit and tie are there to help you state who you are--to act as advertisements of self.
Al Cheyne 1021-01: One account is that he had his insights when serving as a soldier of fortune (volunteer on the Protestant side in the Thirty Years War - in spite of the fact that he was a Catholic!). He was in Germany at the time of the insights. They must certainly have had the quality of an epiphany. This was in 1620. In 1624 he travelled to Italy to thank the Virgin Mary at Loretto for these experiences (which he had while fighting against the Catholics!). Interesting to speculate that his insights must have had some of the qualities of the beatific visions of the saints. Al--these are interesting speculations. At the beginning of the Meditations, Descartes said he'd wanted to sit down and strip away all the truths he believed in, to imagine them all as the lies of a trickster demon out to bamboozle him, then to see what he could resurrect from this chaos of negation--what he could say with absolute clarity was true. So the initial impulse or vision may have hit him when he was a young soldier. Then he says he had to wait until he was older, well-ensconced, able to be alone, and had leisure time before he could live out the thought experiment that had obsessed him. So the question is, where was he when performing this destruction and reconstruction of reality? Meanwhile, you've pointed out the value of passion points--key imprinting points that form the life goals into which an individual can breathe the most fire and in whose pursuit he can come vividly alive. Frankly, the goal of putting together a panoramic overview of the sciences and arts hit me at sixteen while I was working in a cancer research lab. The insight that "to he who hath it shall be given, and from he who hath not even what he hath shall be taken away" hit me late on a Friday night, walking in the cold, stone-cobbled and stone-walled streets of Jerusalem, utterly friendless and alone, absorbed in the depression that endless solitude rouses. The sky was lit with cold, cold stars, and the cobblestones were splayed with the light that came from the small windows of the apartments behind the solid wall of stone that lined both sides of the street. From within those apartments came the singing of orthodox jewish families gathered around dining room tables with white linen tablecoths and candles to celebrate the arrival of a goddess of joy--the queen of the sabbath. I could hear the songs, see the light, but could not participate. I was shrivelling because i had not. Those within were thriving because they, indeed, had. What did they have and what did I lack? Social warmth. So social warmth's presence and absence has a powerful impact on the human emotions--that was the insight gleaned from pain. Two passion points--one
I fixed on at the age of sixteen, another that I fixed on at the age
of 19--those have powered, primed, and pumped my work ever since. I
suspect that Descartes was living out a similar passion point--an imprinting
point--when he tried to strip himself of life's givens so he could see
what was left, what one thing was irrefutable. And you may have hit
on the time when the fixation twisted itself indelibly into his self,
his soul, his motivational system, his personality. Howard The idea of passion points--imprinting moments in childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood--comes from my work with rock stars. Musical artists easily fall into the one-hit wonder pattern. They put out a song that soars on the charts, release, perhaps, one more, then they disappear forever from the public eye, never to be seen--or heard--again. My goal was to give rock and r&b artists an enduring career. The first task was to do a four-hour session--or several--in which we went through the artist's life story from the very beginning on up to the present, searching for what I thought of in those days as the artist's soul--the source of personal passion, of the unseen self--that roared and danced in her music, her lyrics, and her stage performance. The performing and creating personality is often one the self of daily life doesn't know. The everyday self is the one that goes through the automatic rituals of "hello, how are you?" "fine, thank you, and how are you?" It has a full arsenal of clichés with which to deal with most situations that involve what TS Eliot calls preparing "a face to meet the faces that we meet." (Erving Goffman. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books, 1959, covers this aspect of self pretty thoroughly.) But another self reveals its existence in lyrics, music, and performance. It is often a separate personality, an interior god of sorts, a self that reveals its form only in ecstatic moments--when a piece of music "writes itself" or when in the throes of a stage performance the singer "loses himself" and is caught up in a transcendent experience. I went through the story of an artist's life with him hunting for the moments in childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood that had sealed themselves into the web of emotion that made the hidden god of creativity and of ecstasy. If I could find the passion points, I could find the hidden self. I then introduced that self of ecstasy to the everyday self, the self of hellos and how are yous. From the moment of discovery on, I did everything in my power to keep that artist in touch with the hidden self. I also told him or her that he owed his audience not just his songs and his performances, but his life. By revealing his life and articulating his passions he could reveal others to themselves, he could validate them in their moments of madness or confusion, he could bring order and out of the chaos of his listeners' emotions. Give your audience just a glimpse of your emotional self, and you become a one hit wonder. Come to know that self and reveal it to your audience year after year-through its changes and growth--and you become an icon, a figure who helps interpret others to themselves, takes others out of themselves, and validates feelings multitudes have had but have been afraid are insane. What is insane? Feelings that have no social acceptance, no words to describe them, no validation of an other, no mirror of recognition in others' eyes or words. If an artist gives this validation and transcendence to others, he saves their souls. He makes what seemed lunatic sane. He yanks others out of their moments of trouble and gives them instants of joy. Give your emotional self to others and they will hold you in their heart for a lifetime. Al Cheyne suggests a relationship between Descartes' living out of his passionate self--the self of an imprinting moment--and the revelations of saints. I agree with him. The inner gods are easily described in secular terms. They can be described and explained via psychology, evolutionary theory, sociology, and the other tools with which we work in science. They can also be described in the parallel languages-the isomorphic metaphors--of poetry and religion. But the trick is more than just understanding where the inner gods come from (passion points), it is to invoke them. The real goal is to make those gods come alive, to make them thrive, and to help others achieve their own revelations and mystic ecstasies. However one must do this while suppressing one of the most potent inner gods of all-the god of violence, hatred, and war. One must unleash the gods of wonder, of light in darkness, and of creativity. Howard
The irony is that even the most central, personal self is a product of our ties to others. Imprinting is the biological message with which we suck others deeply into our minds and attach our minds to those others…permanently. Self is ingested others no matter how you slice it. Yes, others are us. Self is others. Others are the most private us. And yet there is a private and inviolable us. And there is a way to find it. Why do we need to find it? To kindle passion in our lives. To make our work meaningful. To succeed. To contribute. To become vital friends. And most of all, to love--sexually, sensuously, and with all our heart and soul. For love is the greatest threat and the greatest challenge the self will face. That's a basic message of the book. "A dream like this seems kind of vaguely ludicrous and completely unobtainable, but this moment is directly connected to those childhood imagings. For anyone who is on the downside of advantage and relying purely on courage, it is possible. Thank you." ~~ Russell Crowe, "Best Actor" Oscar Acceptance Speech, March 25, 2001, sounding ominously like Howard Bloom. _______________________________ _______________________________ Rodolfo Llinas has produced an extremely interesting book, I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self. The reviews below are tantalizing to say the least. But the ideas cited in the reviews have at least two interesting implications. First, Professor Llinas seems to be saying that the self is the cockpit of what I've been calling future projectors-compressed records of the past that successfully guide even a bacterium through the maze of what's coming up next. Second, Llinas' work implies that we have a sense of time primarily because we move. So in what sense is time an artifact of this perception, and to what extent is it an internal (Innemwelt) reflection of the reality (Umwelt) through which we will have to jolt, slam, slide, or glide? Even a plant, by the way, has future projectors. I have a very ambitious dumb cane in this bedroom. It wants to take over the world. And it has built within it a future-projector, a strategy, a plan. It sends a very regal, tree-like projection straight up into the air then spreads extremely impressive, white-veined green leaves. As its owner, one becomes very hopeful, very proud of its achievement and successful pretensions to chlorophyllic nobility. Then comes shattering disappointment. The tree-like elegance becomes top-heavy, bends the trunk below it, and finally brings the whole bumbershoot ignominiously to the ground. There it lays, sprawled far out to the side of the pot, seemingly a testament to poor plant engineering. But the humiliation is the result of an illusion. The plant is not failing, it is attempting to succeed at something rather cunning. The fall from grace is an attempt to seize new real estate. If you look carefully at the contact point between the plant and the floor on which it lies, you'll see a collar of rivet-like nubbins projecting from the lower-arm thick stem. If you simply leave it be, some of those bolt-headish projections will become new stems-big thick ones groping for new windows and new photons on which to feed. However if you put a pot with additional soil under the studded dumb cane collar, the nubbins will become thick, imperious, greedy roots. Within less time than it takes a dandelion to change clothes from gold to fluff, the dumb cane roots will fill the entire pot-even if it's big enough to be a drinking cup for an elephant. Up will go a new trunk and new leaves. Then eventually they will tumble down again, seemingly dragged down by the weight of hubris, but actually cleverly taking over new swatches of land and lightscape. Plants have future projectors and motoricity-it's just that their versions of a lightning strike for lebensraum take place in weeks or months, not minutes or days. They have what Llinas calls FAPs-fixed action patterns. And they have Skinner's sina qua none of mind-stimulus and response-knowing when to send nubbins up as leaves and when to send them down, grabbing at the soil below. No soil, no roots, no landgrab scheme. Does this mean plants also have psychology? American Scientist-Scientists Bookshelf July-August 2001 http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/amsci/bookshelf/Leads01/iofvortex.html, downloaded 8/12/01 Scientists' Bookshelf July-August, 2001 NEUROSCIENCE From Motricity to Mentality I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self. Rodolfo Llinás. x + 302 pp. The MIT Press, 2001. $27.95. Chuck Knoblauch, until lately the second baseman for the New York Yankees, has been suffering from a strange affliction: He has forgotten how to throw to first base. The throws that give him the most trouble are the easiest ones, in situations where he has plenty of time to think about what he's doing. By his own report, the thinking is the root of the problem. Before the ordeal began, his arm knew how to throw, and his head didn't need to bother about it; now, his head won't stop meddling, and the ball often goes astray. Knoblauch's plight reminds us that the relations between mind and body are not always those of master and servant. None of us knows-at the level of consciousness-how to walk, or breathe, or throw a baseball. If we had to take charge of these movements, issuing commands to all the hundreds of muscles in just the right sequence, who would not collapse in a quivering mass? Rodolfo Llinás, a distinguished neurophysiologist at the New York University School of Medicine, believes that such "automatic" motor acts, which we can perform but not explain, teach lessons to be taken very seriously. He calls the movements fixed-action patterns (FAPs), and he argues that they are where thinking and consciousness began. Active movement-what Llinás calls motricity-is the very source and main stem of mental life. "That which we call thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement." Only organisms that move have brains, Llinás points out. A tree has no need of a central nervous system because it's not going anywhere, but an animal on the prowl needs to see where it's headed and needs to predict-perhaps even envision-its future place in the world. The poster-child organism for this close connection between motricity and mentality is the sea squirt. This marine creature starts life as a motile larva, equipped with a rudimentary brainlike ganglion of about 300 neurons. But after a day or two of cavorting in the shallows, the larva finds a hospitable site on the bottom and puts down roots. As a sessile organism, it has no further use for a brain, and so it eats it! (Llinás resists the urge to give the punchline that always follows when this story is told to an academic audience: "It's a lot like getting tenure.") The notion that the "I" of consciousness evolved from a central facility for planning and predicting movement is one of the major themes that Llinás wants to convey in this book. A second theme is the
importance of rhythms and patterns of synchronization in brain function.
If you look only at the wiring diagram of the nervous system-the geometric
or topological network of connections between neurons-you can fail to
notice the striking temporal organization of neural activity. But the
temporal patterns actually predate the spatial ones: Rhythmic excitations
are seen even in early embryonic muscle and nerve tissue, before the
brain itself has begun to coalesce. In the mature brain, dispersed populations
of cells organize themselves into vast phase-locked choirs that hum
steady notes or chirp in unison when given the right stimuli. These
consistent and carefully maintained rhythms surely mean something. "Temporal
coherence is believed to be the neurological mechanism that underlies
perceptual unity, the binding together or conjunction of independently
derived sensory components." Llinás draws particular attention
to a 40-hertz neural duet sung by the thalamus and the cerebral cortex,
two areas of the brain with dense interconnections. This is a signal
he has explored in his own laboratory, in difficult experiments that
call for simultaneously recording the activities of dozens of neurons.
His findings have led him to believe that the 40-hertz signal is a central,
organizing drumbeat. It is "a candidate for the generation of unitary
perceptual entities" and "a main mechanism of brain function."
Furthermore: "Subjectivity or self is generated by the dialogue
between the thalamus and the cortex." Do these conclusions deliver
what Llinás promises in his subtitle-a pathway "from neurons
to self"? At best I would say he gives us a series of stepping
stones, and at a few places along the trail the reader is asked to make
a fairly acrobatic leap from one stone to the next. Many of the ideas
presented here strike me as highly plausible hypotheses, and they may
very well turn out to be true; but as yet they are supported only by
rather scant evidence. When Llinás claims that his schema is
"the only way to explain" an observation, I am not always
persuaded that every other possibility has been ruled out. But a fully
mechanistic and pedestrian explanation of the brain is surely too much
to ask. As Llinás remarks, "'I' has always been the magnificent
mystery."-Brian Hayes Sigma Xi | About Us | Latest Issue | Bookshelf
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Web Admin Marcel Roele writes: old hb: Van Basten's non-verbal brain was able to > handle terabytes of coordination between the millions of cells of > muscle and nerve needed to kick the ball in a strategically perfect > manner. That much the Dutch had figured out for themselves. The point > I tried to make was that it had taken decades of conscious application > of will to get Van Basten's muscles and brain so precisely practiced > that these macrocalculations could take place in a flash. mr: decades of conscious application of will - but then look at the heritability of being an athlete. What I see with my toddlers is that they try out everything and that being good at something is self-reinforcing. hb: good point. could innate talent--the ability of a body and its brain to crawl around the legs of tables and of chairs, to take toys away from other kids, and to seduce smiles out of parents and strangers--play a role in which 50% of the infant brain's cells will live and which will die? Could an initial edge at socializing or navigating lead to a further investment of brainstuff in areas of activity already paying off? Could the huge burst of brain-sculpting that ends at roughly 2.5 years of age (see Neural Correlates of Consciousness, roughly p. 92) take its cues from what works and what doesn't in the baby's body-brain-environment combo? Meanwhile, a further note on Van Basten and others like him--from the basketball-obsessed kids of America's inner cities to the soccer addicted toddlers of Europe and South America. The immense willpower that kept Van Basten practicing year after year to perfect his sport was a testament to the manner in which the crowd inserts itself within us--taking up its most potent residence in the parts of emotion we think of as most intimately private, personal, and us. It's clear that Van Basten had a passion for soccer. So do millions of kids worldwide. But where does soccer lust come from? Others. Think for a moment. Where does soccer come from? Is it evolved, like an instinct? Highly unlikely. The Encyclopedia Britannica says "modern soccer was invented in the elite boys' schools of Victorian England." Even my notions on Instant Evolution don't propose that humans manage to pack the rulebooks and rituals of a sport like this into the genome in a mere 150 years. No, soccer started as an elite sport in the British Empire's center, then trickled down via the tracks of imitation. By the time Marco Van Basten was a kid, it was a practice popularized by tens of thousands of promoters, publicists, journalists, coaches, and other culture makers--aided by the efforts of hundreds of millions, and perhaps even billions, of enthusiasts. Lord knows what key imprinting moments opened Marco's emotional brain to accept soccer as a permanent implant. But implanted it was. And from the outside. Once the roar of the crowds and the sweat of the stars had taken root within him, however, Basten was hooked. From that point in time his most intense personal passions were under a form of semi-permanent remote control, with the controller in the hands of masses of other humans, humans dead and living. Marco was committed to rousing the cheers of the millions as his heroes had. He was committed to following the rules and rituals established by committees all over the world then perfected and hammered home by roughly eight generations of dedicated footballers. To give a tip of the hat to Rodolfo Llinas, here's a very genuine example of the extent to which the self of an individual was vitally connected to future-predictors--those that predict the trajectory of a ball, a goalie, and a rival team's defenders, and those that calculate the career path necessary to win fame and fortune. But there was every calculation pulsated to the rhythms of the crowd. mr: In a few years time trainers will note at what they excel and will help develop these skills. Long before any conscious decision is made by the youngster he/she is already at a trajectory to develop her/his talents. And these talents are adaptations, or spandrels, whatever you want to call them. Suppose you're on a prehistoric hunt and are blessed with the Van Basten Soccer Gene(s) - if you're a beater you can kick a rabbit threatening to escape and redirect its run towards the boys with bows or nets. If you're in primitive tribal war you'll dodge the arrows and spears. And you're constantly aware of where the teammates are and where the enemy / prey is. hb: nice point. mr: Very important; in the Gulf War most allied-victims were killed by friendly fire but I think the same risk was present in running battles of 100,000 yrs ago. Howard Bloom is very good at realizing what other people are very good at - a skill sharpened by practice. But by conscious thought from the beginning? Or was a genetic programme in hb activated early in life? hb: good question. I must ruminate on that one. mr: The programme called: `in this life we're not in the body of a large, muscular, athletic, symmetric, dominating male, but there is quite a good brain there, so let's try to steer the brain into the direction of becoming an astute assessor of unripe talent that has the balance tipped against it - but could go a long way with a little help. Like paralyzed Fagan helped Figan to become alpha male at Gombe. (No insults implied - Fagan and hb are among my all time favourite primates). hb: LOL. mr: The beta male needs more insight into other people's minds than the alpha male. A talent to read minds and recognize potential stars probably evolved not as a means to gain alpha status for oneself, but to become the weaker, non-threatening, but indispensable ally of the Prince - like Machiavelli. hb: a very interesting hypothesis, Marcel. In fact, it could be a blockbuster. Howard
A true genius, he said,
is not the man who is able to mouth incomprehensibilities. He's the
man able to make the incomprehensible clear and even mouthwatering to
someone of normal intelligence with just a high school education. Yes,
Einstein got me because like me he was so busy with his curiosities
that he often walked out of the house in his pajamas, forgetting to
put on his clothes before heading off to his office at Princeton to
lead a perfectly normal day. Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell,
who provided me with the arguments I needed to tear down religion when
I discovered I was an atheist at the age of thirteen. My tribal forefathers,
the writers of the Bible--a book whose bloody nature disturbed me tremendously,
but whose appeal to others fascinated me. Isaiah, whose example inspired
me. William James, who gave me the seething, wonderful passions of mysticism,
served up on silver tray of science. Louis Untermeyer, whose anthologies
of poetry helped me see that religion expressed instincts and emotions
inside of us--gods and demons in our psyche--but expressed these things
with poetry. All these hit me at once and twisted into a knot I can't
forget when I was thirteen. Allen Ginsberg, whose Howl and lifestyle
(as portrayed in the pages of Time Magazine) bit deep into me with recognition
of a place for me when I was fifteen. Jack Kerouac, whose adventures
I tried to emulate. Henry Luce who shaped my vision of Ginsberg, Corso,
and Kerouac. The authors who gave me zen Buddhism, the filmmakers, novelists,
and heaps of musicians who gave me Yoruban trance ritual when I was
fifteen. Edward Weston--the photographer---whose pictures taught me
now to see what science preached so powerfully--the patterns that made
the mundane seem surreal, surprising, fresh, muscular, soft, seductive,
unrecognizable, but to the emotions instant sources of arousal. (for
good Weston's, see http://www.edward-weston.com/prints_ew.html) TS Eliot
and Edna St Vincent Millay, whose poems hit me hard and stayed with
me as guides when I was sixteen. Nietzsche and Aristotle, whose books
joined that mix almost immediately. Phil Fish, a biochemist, who was
assigned to me as a mentor when I worked in a cancer research laboratory
at the age of sixteen. Phil had spent three years trying to synthesize
one molecule--and he clearly had another two years to go. With Nietzsche
in my veins, I felt I didn't want to be a mole digging all my life at
one dark hole, but wanted to soar like Zarathustra's eagle over the
mountaintops and see, not just one dot, but the entire cosmos of science
spreading out beneath me. These were my passion points--my moments of
imprinting. Why? Because I will never part from their lessons, their
commandments. Never. That is what my will says. My will holds me to
my masters and I willingly give myself over every day to the small tribe
of them. All dead men and women. Most of them people I never met (as
David Berreby points out). They are the spirits of my intellectual and
emotional ancestors inside me. And if I am ever untrue to them, I will
tear the very fabric of my self. So what is me and what is will? It's
them. It's others. But, oh, how deeply, seethingly, it is me! Howard
see \cnt\form.doc HB: the implication of what you've proposed seems to be that we have a single personality to reduce the number of potential acts of recognition required in a social context. this is well worth considering. however aren't we required to go through the dance you mention anyway? don't we have to determine if we are approaching the boss in his mood as a conciliatory personality, a belligerent personality, a depressed personality, or an ebullient personality if we wish to get across our points of view or avoid a career?damaging move? another possible implication of your concept might be that the need for a single personality is shaped at least as much by group selection as individual selection. if each member of a group of 150 (the usual human group size, according to Robin Dunbar) has only one personality, there are only 150 different acts of recognition an individual needs to be capable of in order to determine who is his dominant, who his subordinate, to whom he owes favors, who owes favors to him, etc. If each member of the group has five personalities, that's 750 acts of recognition shelved in memory??beyond the human capacity. However this indicates we have only a single personality for the benefit of others, not for the sake of enhancing our own genetic legacy. Or, to put it differently, it implies that whereas with five personalities per group member, our oh?so?finite brain would be capable of handling relations in groups of only 30 members, with one personality per group member we can manage to live in groups of 150. In any clash, even one in which the members of the big pack simply raise their bristles and the members of the smaller pack slink away without violence, the group of 150 will beat the group of 30 nearly every time. so the group of 150 is a more successful extended phenotype. the group members need not be related. one way or the other, the group as a battle vehicle is more effective at protecting the genes of its members than a smaller group would be. Howard _______________________________
-- Doesn't fit??a brain is
a congerie of individual elements making a whole of utterly different
character than the parts. Like so much in this universe, mind and brain
are both emergent properties, one of the miracles to which form can
give birth as it complexifies. I have a catalog of eukaryotic parts
(the bricks of both of our metaphors). Now I need to know the functional
relationships, the interconnected dynamic, which makes them a familied
house??alive and ever changing. Each part (to use your word) has its
intelligence. Including the membrane. But when all are networked in
motion, "a terrible beauty is born." _________ So across the spinal
cord, there will be a differential gradient of each of these molecules
acting in opposition to each other. And this determines positioning
and function for the cells being born and migrating at that particular
developmental time. The studies that have demonstrated this are incredibly
elegant and beautiful (see Thomas Jessell in medline) So I have hypothesized
that in the adult, persisting developmental molecules act in opposition
to maintain or preserve "form". Injury destroys form, and
so then another question is : is post injury plasticity a way that has
evolved to try to restore "form". But it always comes down
to a part of the thread that steve and greg were discussing "Intelligent
design". Because HOW do the molecules "know" what the
"form" is supposed to be to either develop it, maintain it
or restore it? hb: good question, mj, very good. In a message dated
12/19/2002 1:38:55 AM Eastern Standard Time, HowlBloom writes: Subj:
I have a question. With all the genomic plasticity you've been zeroing
in on an Date: 12/19/2002 1:38:55 AM Eastern Standard Time From: HowlBloom
To: [email protected] Sent from the Internet Greg--I have a
question. With all the genomic plasticity you've been zeroing in on
and that I've been tracking less assiduously, how in the world do you
and I manage to keep an identity? How do six billion humans remain virtually
identical in form--and identical to humans who lived 100,000 years ago?
What anchors our form so successfully? What keeps 100 trillion cells--cells
wiped away by death and replaced by cells aborning--working together
so successfully each day in the process called you, me, and in the larger
process of which we're part, the process of society? Howard |
